


Acts of Redemption

by greenbirds



Category: Babylon 5
Genre: Gen, scifi_bigbang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-05
Updated: 2010-09-05
Packaged: 2017-10-11 12:25:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/112380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenbirds/pseuds/greenbirds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of the Minbari civil war, Lennier, <em>Shaal</em> Mayan, and Shakiri face a long road home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Acts of Redemption

**Author's Note:**

> As they say, it takes a village.
> 
> My profoundest thanks to an0nymous for attack-cheerleading hand-holding, and listening to me bitch and moan, bethany_lauren for beta, and ilyena_sylph for additional typo-hunting (particularly since my beta folks stepped up at the last minute). yappichick provided the amazing cover art.
> 
> Chapter titles are from T.S. Eliot's _The Waste Land_.

_PROLOGUE: Unspeakable Acts_

 

The Grey Council was shattered. (_Delenn had shattered it_).

The world was broken. (_Delenn had broken it_),

Yedor was in flames (the world was in flames), and Mayan's words were gone.

Years ago when they were merely acolytes in temple together (before they had been Shaal Mayan and Satai Delenn), when they were just two more anonymous girls with bell drums and white robes and the words of Valen on their tongues. A storm had closed in around them, shaking the walls with thunder and lashing the windows with rain and they had shivered with fear in the darkness, Delenn had told her dear Mayan (dear Mayan, lovely Mayan) a story of a lost child and a temple and Valen's voice in the empty spaces.

_I will not let my children come to harm, not here in my great house._

_I will not let my children come to harm, not here in my great house_ (but Valen's house was burning).

Word had come from the north, before the madness had come here, before flames licked at trees in the temple square and fountains ran dry and warriors in black with hate-maddened eyes roamed streets filled with screaming, that their brethren (gentle priests and teachers, children in white robes) had been driven empty-handed from their homes into the wilderness in the freezing darkness of a winter night. Six children and an old man had died before they found their way to safety.

_Tee'la_ recalled memories. What could Mayan write of this? There were no words but ancient ones and the words of aliens. For a thousand years the crystal cities had been safe. Even when the world had gone mad after Dukhat was lost, even when an entire world cried out for vengeance, home had meant peace, flowing water, sunlight on snow. For a thousand years, Minbari had not killed Minbari. For a thousand years, there had been peace.

(Now the streets were thick with smoke and blood).

Years later, Delenn, Delenn who believed she was prophecy-touched, Delenn who had tried to stop Dukhat's blood with her own hands, who had heard their leader's dying words; Delenn whose destiny had ended a war and drawn her to the stars, had said simply, "Faith manages."

She had believed Delenn. Even when the shadow-men, the human men, had taken Mayan, beaten her, branded her. (She wore the brand still, as a mark of defiance, a mark of survival). She had worn it and gone forward, worn it on other worlds and in the holiest places in her own, and she had sung words of harmony, words of memory. She had believed Delenn even after the chrysalis had changed Delenn into something else, something alien, even when some of the priests had disdained prophecy and called Delenn a monster. She had believed Delenn even when the Shadows had returned, when it seemed all that they knew was at an end.

_Faith manages._ (But Delenn had broken the Council, and Minbar was burning.)

For three days Mayan had stood at her window, stood as the rays of dawn struggled through the smoke, and listened to the shouting and the screams, and tried to speak the dawn prayers, but the words had died on her lips. What prayers did one say at the end of the world?

(What words did one speak when her faith had run out?)

The day before, two boys – or men barely more than boys; this madness had stolen their innocence – in the dark robes of the Anla'Shok, naked pikes in their hands, eyes smudged with exhaustion, had come to Mayan, begged her to let them take her to safety behind the heavy carved doors of the temple. Begged her to let them take her to Valen's house (_I will not let harm come to my little ones, not here in my great house_, but Valen had lied and the world was burning), and she had invited them in, and given them tea (tea made with clear water, the proper words spoken), and refused. In the end, there was nowhere to hide from what was coming, nowhere to hide from what Delenn (Delenn who she had once loved, in whose arms she had once sought comfort and joy and forgetting) had wrought.

(We who were living are now dying).

She stood at her window again that night, when it should have been sunset, rosy clouds and twilight, but instead the sky was dark with smoke and beneath her, men and women walked the streets stiffly, staring, or brought home their wounded on makeshift stretchers. Shaal Mayan stood at her window in the darkness, and she whispered the words for the dead.

The oath of the Satai, of the Grey Council, was sacred: "I am become Grey. I stand between the darkness and the light, the candle and the star." (But there were no more Satai to hold back the darkness). The Anla'Shok said, "We stand on the bridge, and no one may pass" (but the bridge beneath their feet was burning). There was nothing left.

Time passed strangely here at the end of the world. Hours might have passed, or minutes, or days, while Mayan stood at her window and watched the slow parade of the dead and those not yet dead stumble past. Perhaps it was the distant screaming, the irregular explosions, the weapons fire that masked the noise, perhaps it was only the wailing in her mind. She never knew why she did not hear the door behind her burst open in a spatter of splintering wood, why she did not hear the thump and stamp of their boots on the floor until one of them grabbed her by the arm (grabbed her in a bruising grip, and she cried out) and wrenched her around to face them.

Two of them, young men, with close-set dark eyes and mouths distorted with violence and lust and hatred, their bonecrests rising in swirls and sharp spires. Warriors. A bruise spread across the cheekbone of one; the polished metal spikes on the breastplate of the other were dappled with blood (later she could not remember if she saw it in the half-light, or merely smelled it, heavy and clotted and metallic). They were laughing.

The taller one, the bruised one, pushed her against the wall with rough, gloved hands. His breath was thick and foul, and one of his teeth was broken. "Well then, look what we've found." Lenn'ah, the tongue of the warriors, was harsh and grating, but she understood it. It was the language of death. The other one chuckled hoarsely, and she shuddered.

_A'fa'an esa de'fala._ (I know what is coming). Who would speak the words of the dead for her? Who would sing her soul home? It did not matter. She closed her eyes. At least it would be over now. "Please," she whispered (and her voice, the voice that had sung words of praise on other worlds, on so many other worlds, was hoarse and it broke and it no longer mattered), "please, just let it be quick."

She waited, with the darkness behind her eyes, for the sharp agony of the knife, for the dull crushing blow of the warrior's pike called _denn'bok_. She waited for her heart to stutter, her breath to cease.

Instead the warriors laughed.

Later, she would insist that she could not remember the details of what happened, later she would insist that she did not know how her robe had come to be torn open (she would draw a wall of silence around the memory of the rush of cold air between her breasts, of the creak of leather and the smell of blood and sweat and the weight of the warrior as he leaned his weight into her, laughing).

In the temple, they had learned to fight (she and Delenn, two acolytes side-by-side in the sun-warmed courtyard, two acolytes among row upon row of acolytes and priests in white robes), they had learned the lunges and the kicks, the strikes and the blocks, repeating the patterns in an endless dance until they became automatic, like breathing, the motion that freed the mind. (The discipline of the body becomes the discipline of the mind becomes the discipline of the soul). They repeated them until their muscles remembered, until their animal selves remembered.

Her sentient self, her sapient self, had welcomed death (but it was another self that responded to the terror of nakedness and the lust of two blood-soaked men in black leather (she would insist she did not remember), and she would never knew how the knife had come to be in her hand.

Perhaps it was merely that her strength had surprised them. Perhaps they had not expected their prize to fight. Perhaps their madness (the madness that engulfed the broken world) had made them slow, weak.

 

When she could speak again, when they came days later to question her, Mayan would recall only the smell of smoke, the ever present smell of smoke, and the pain of blows as she whirled or the room whirled around her (she would never know which). She would not remember the feeling of the knife she held tearing through soft flesh, grinding against solid bone. She would not remember the hot blood as it spilled over her bare arms, her bare stomach.

When they came to question her, she would remember only coming to herself in the sudden silence when the moon rose high, would remember only the roaring in her ears, the pool of cool and slowly clotting blood that spread across the floor, and two lifeless forms in stiff black leather that laid on their backs with their clouded, lifeless eyes staring ever skyward.

##

  
_I. The Fire Sermon_

For the last thousand years (five hundred and fifty thousand days, give or take; countless generations), the Temple of Varenni had stood as an unfortunate footnote (they who forget history are doomed to repeat it), a relic of a brutal past that ended with the coming of Valen (Jeffrey Sinclair, Minbari-not-born-of-Minbari, and even that knowledge -- mortals were never meant to know the true faces of their gods -- had not been enough to destroy Delenn's faith). In the Time Before (Valen had said that Minbari shall not kill other Minbari, and for a thousand years it had been so), wars had been ended in this temple (wars had been ended in fire, in annihilation; wars had been ended in the Starfire Wheel).

Lennier of the Third Fane of Chu'domo had never expected to set foot in this place (sacred but bloodstained, from a time when his people had practiced other, stranger forms of holiness), to walk on stone floors worn smooth by the tread of countless ancient feet (white and gray and tan had been the colors of the priests then too, but the words in their hearts and on their lips had been different). The passages were narrow, dark, of rough-hewn stone and the temple felt like something that grew into the rock; the temples he knew (used to know; his crystal cities were now in ruins and in flames; rubble and ash and smoke and still burning) had been air and light and soaring.

He had never expected to come here. Even less had he expected to come into this old and suffocating place with Delenn (Delenn who he had once thought prophecy-touched, until prophecy had been revealed to be naught more than memory of a future that had become past; now she was merely beautiful, and strong). Lennier had never expected to come here to surrender. But Delenn wanted no more bloodshed, no more burning, no more sundering. (Delenn's wishes could shake the stars; she had broken the Grey Council. Bound the Rangers -- the _Anla'shok_ \-- to her service. Ended the Shadow War).

Sometimes (Delenn had murmured to him last night as she stared out at the stars) it took more courage to kneel than to fight on. Her voice had been steady.

What happened here today (whatever happened here, whether bloodshed or burning or peace) would be witnessed by the countless thousands in the galleries rising up towards the dome that enclosed this holy place (worker, warrior, priest, and it is an infinity of echoes he can hear from the chamber just ahead), would be broadcast across Minbar, and to their brothers and sisters among the stars. Whatever happened here today, everything would change.

Delenn wanted an end to this.

(And Valen had asked, "Will you follow me into fire? Will you follow me into darkness? Will you follow me into death?" Delenn had told Lennier that when she became Satai, Dukhat had asked, "What do you fear?" The Shadows had asked "What do you want?" It was wanting that was dangerous).

Beside him, Delenn's steps were even, firm, neither hurrying nor waiting. Her breathing was quiet. Her face was calm (calm with the fierce certainty of holy truths); this was not the face of a beaten (broken) woman coming to surrender (to humble herself and admit defeat and in so doing, save her world), and with a sudden catch of his heart, he was afraid for her. When Lennier had come to her (a lifetime ago; he had been young, so young, and she had been Satai, gentle but terrible in her power and she had not yet changed, had not yet _become_. She had told him that she could not have an aide that would not look up (then he had been afraid to look upon her face; now, seeing the cold fire there, he wished he could look away).

Ten steps (he would count them, feeling it important to know but not knowing why) from the portal that would lead them to the Starfire Wheel (to bowed heads and reckoning), she had stopped, drawn something (a scroll case, and it was only the most important, the most sacred things that still demanded ink and paper and the touch of a living hand) from her robes (they were purple; her favorite color, and she had once confided to him that she loved it because it spoke to her of grace and strength) and placed it (cool and solid and somehow forbidding) in his hand. Had told him it was a set of instructions, and that he was to keep it with him (keep it close) until this ordeal was over.

A lifetime ago (only three earth years ago, but he had been a different man then), Lennier had sworn an oath to obey Delenn, to follow her word in all things (she was Satai, she stood between the candle and the star and he was young and untried and untested; later, he had learned to love her), and now he wished he had not; his acceptance of this scroll (this burden, and somehow he thinks it should be heavier) had an air of grim finality.

"Yes, Delenn," he had murmured, and they had emerged into the cavernous dome, and felt the heaviness of thousands of watching (waiting) eyes.

Shakiri (leader of the warrior caste, and the warriors had great leaders once, leaders like Branmer who had understood sacredness as well as strength and led with honesty and wisdom, but so many had been lost to fire and Shadows, and this man who was left understood nothing but hunger for power) was waiting for them, flanked by two others (one, Lennier recognized: Neroon, who had always been Delenn's worthy adversary, but never a true enemy; Neroon had always respected her), all of them alike in silver-studded black with bonecrests spiralling up to vicious points, expressions superior, cruel. Shakiri looked old, dissipated (and Lennier's teachers had taught that the body reflects the mind reflects the body, and he wondered what corruption gnawed its way outward from heart of this black-clad man).

The warrior leader greeted them, arms spread wide in a gesture of false magnanimity, and perhaps those in the gallery might have interpreted it as genuine, but they could not see the mockery in Shakiri's eyes, the subtly cruel set of his mouth (beside Lennier, Delenn _did_ see them -- she had always seen with true eyes -- and stiffened, but her face remained composed). Delenn was a true leader. Even in anger she had never mocked her enemies, had never rejoiced in the bowed heads and stooped shoulders of the defeated).

Shakiri's voice was strong, resonant, and he proclaimed this day (this day of surrender) a new age for the people of Minbar, a great day that would mark the end of the hostilities (hostilities the Warrior Caste had begun, hostilities that had killed more of Lennier's people than Shakiri's, and Shakiri had always been a great orator, a man who wove spells and nets of words to draw in the unsuspecting, a man who proclaimed fratricide to acclamations of cheers, and a thousand years ago Valen had taught -- Jeffrey Sinclair had taught, and rightly so -- that such men were dangerous).

Beside Lennier, Delenn was silent, still (still as a priestess presiding over the dawn prayers on a peaceful temple morning, and as calm as if she were not standing here on blood-soaked ground, waiting to bow her head to a man with a heart steeped in anger and hate), and Lennier realized, looking at her (she had always been beautiful, and never more so than in this moment when she had been whittled down to naught more than strength and hard bright determination), that Delenn (Delenn who was a bridge between two worlds, both-and-neither) with her cascade of hair and her subtly-alien features had become so familiar (beloved) (familiar) to him that it was Lennier's own people who seemed strange, alien to his eyes (Delenn was home and family and peace and faith and she had taught him not to fear raising his eyes to meet hers).

"The religious caste surrenders," Delenn proclaimed, but her voice (strangely, and he was baffled) was not the voice of one humbled before a superior force. No, in Delenn's voice was the distant echo of a victory cry (the scream of eagles, an Earth poet might have said), and the little metal cylinder she had given him just moments (a lifetime) ago suddenly felt heavy, cold (portentious) against his heart. Only the most sacred words were committed to paper by a living hand, and his people had always considered _last words_ (final words, dying breaths) to be holy.

Delenn had chosen this place (this ancient place where wars were ended in fire and loss and sudden grief). Delenn had wanted an end to this (wanting was dangerous).

Delenn (Lennier knew; he had been with her when she tended to the Markab in their last days, and he had been afraid but she had merely grieved) had never sought death but had never feared it (it would come for them all some day, whether by water or fire or plague or age or necessary sacrifice, and there was no sense in fearing one's inevitable rebirth).

Valen had asked, "Will you follow me into darkness?" and Delenn had sworn her life (sworn her service always in the fires of making and the dusty winds of unmaking, in this life and the next, selah) to Valen.

Lennier had been an acolyte whe he had come to her, and he had not yet spoken those vows (he was too young, still too much a boy, to bind himself not just in this life but into the next, and so it had been even before the coming of Valen; in such things even the ancients with their wars and fire and bloody rites had been wise).

The oath he had sworn later was private (secret, silent, blasphemous and he had always been afraid she would see the lingering traces of it on his lips, his skin, his soul, but she had never turned her face from him): Lennier of the Third Fane of Chu'domo had sworn his life (his breath, his love) to Delenn of Mir.

Valen had been merely a man (wise, but a man, and a human man at that; _we may sometimes look like you, but we are not you. Never forget that_) and his prophecies had not been visions, but memories, and Valen's leadership had been, in the end, of the ordinary kind; had he not brought the Minbari to victory against the Shadows these thousand years past, he would have been, in death, no more extraordinary or sacred than Lennier, or a stone in the temple courtyard. But Delenn was beautiful, gentle, terrible in her kindness, and her will could (did) move worlds (_she changes everything she touches, and everything she touches, changes_).

Lennier could hear the strength in Delenn's voice (the strength of swords, the strength of stones; strength Shakiri must wish for) and he knew in that moment (did not want to know; tried to shove the thought away) what she was planning.

Valen had asked, "Will you follow me into death?"

Lennier wanted to reach out for her, feeling as if Delenn (beautiful Delenn, full of holy fire and faith in a man who had been merely a man; she said her faith was in the universe and the manifestation did not matter, said that when Lennier was older he would understand this) was standing on the edge of a deep (endless, bottomless) chasm, wanted to shout to her that there must be another way (always another choice; the humans insisted on this, and sometimes they were right, but Delenn believed in destiny), but before he could speak (before he could gather the courage) her final lot was cast.

"But," Delenn said, and her voice was firm without being hard (even the Shadow War had not hardened her, this quicksilver priestess), "the Religious Caste does not give up its sovereign rights to form a new government."

They were here in the Temple of Varenni. In the chamber of the Starfire Wheel. Delenn's eyes were bright, her cheeks flushed, and Lennier knew, all at once (he had known all along) that he had been right to be afraid for her. Shakiri looked startled, contemptuous (and beneath that, confused. Of course Delenn would confound such a man. Shakiri understood nothing of nothing).

Delenn had been the chosen of Dukhat (Dukhat, taken far too soon and too suddenly, casualty of a simple (disastrous) misunderstanding, Dukhat's whose death had ignited a holy war against the humans and the memory of whose words had ended the jihad before the war had ended a world; Lennier had been just a boy, but he remembered -- they all did) and Dukhat's lessons (strength, mercy, patience) were scribed on Delenn's very bones, and it is with an echo her mentor's banked fire and an undercurrent of rage that Delenn told Shakiri that Dukhat had never found dishonor in surrender, that she recognized the superior forces of the Warrior Caste (who for two centuries the priests had armed and trained and for whom they had prayed, and who had repaid the faith of their brethren with fire, hatred, death).

Shakiri looked angry (confused and not liking it; clearly none of this was going as he intended -- Delenn had surrendered, but done so unbent, unbroken, and Shakiri must have known this even if he knew nothing else: in accepting Delenn's surrender, he had lost), but over his shoulder Neroon looked pained (and they had never agreed, Satai, (always Satai, even after the Grey Council had broken; she had sworn the oath, to stand between the candle and the star, and she would never break it) Delenn and Neroon, and he had always wanted fire and scourging where Delenn wanted water and healing, but both of them had always and forever understood honor and oaths and duty). Would that it had been Neroon at the fore of this party, and not Shakiri. But it was not, and Shakiri had merely looked at Delenn with contempt but without comprehension.

Lennier half-expected the anger in Delenn's voice (threaded through with a deep quiet fury, like veins of magma that might burn through bone or metal or rock) to be echoed in her eyes (half-expected her eyes to be hard, burning) but what was in her eyes as she gazed at Shakiri was compassion (kindness, understanding, deep enough to drown the seas and swallow the world). Above him (tier upon tier upon tier, faces made anonymous by distance) the gallery was silent, watching, waiting (breathing).

(Oh, how Lennier wished he could stop what he knew was coming).

Delenn's hand stood out in sharp relief, white against the darkness in this cavelike temple (his people, before Valen, had worshipped in the womb of the world, and Valen had drawn them out into the air and the starlight and taught them peace) as she gestured at the ceiling (as she told Shakiri that if he wished a return to the ancient ways of blood and flame, sword and staff, they would settle this as it had been settled in the days before Valen; they would settle this in fire).

Lennier could not fault Delenn's logic -- it was a simple matter of connectives; IF Shakiri wished a return to the old ways (a turning away from Valen, a turning away from NOT -- Minbari shall not kill Minbari, a return to rule by force) THEN this conflict between the Warrior Caste and the Religious Caste should be settled in the old way also, which is to be said it should be settled here, in the temple of Varenni (it should be settled by death). _Modus ponens,_ as the human mathematicians would term it. His heart pounded. He did not like this equation.

The Starfire Wheel was not so much a wheel as a lidless eye, and the light of its gaze (as it opened above Delenn, opened the barest slit, as if the past had just begun to stir, to open its slow eye to gaze angrily at those who had disturbed its slumber) was actinic, seared Lennier's retinas with streaks of bright color and pain, and his eyes watered (Shakiri took a step back; terrified, involuntary), but Delenn did not look away (nor, Lennier noted, did Neroon, and the stony determination on the other Warrior's face echoed Delenn's own).

A column of light fountained forth from the Starfire Wheel, and struck sparks from the ground. (And Lennier knew, he _knew,_ that in a moment -- in a breath -- Delenn would step into that light which consumed all flesh, and that she would do so without flinching and then she would die for her people -- not merely for her caste, but for a whole world, for her family and her clan and the Workers and even the Warriors who had cast children and priests out into the snows to die -- because Delenn was holy and kind where Shakiri was rapacious and a coward, and Lennier had no choice but to watch).

The pain must have been intense as Delenn stepped into that column of brilliance (that column of secret fire) but she gave no sign (her breathing even, her face calm, her shoulders unbowed). She might as well have been walking into a sunlit glade on the temple grounds, or pausing for a moment to contemplate the vista through a window on a bright spring day. But the fire (starfire; Lennier's heart caught in his chest at the thought) that she gave no sign of feeling was reflected in her eyes as Delenn turned to Shakiri.

To those waiting in the gallery (thousands of eyes, their still gaze pressing down on those below), to the warriors that did not know her, Delenn's voice must have sounded strong and terrifyingly even (as if even starfire could not touch her), but Lennier had known her for three years, had been with her when the Markab had died (had confessed his love to her, later, when Lennier thought he and Delenn might pass from this universe adrift in space and unremarked), had heard her in anger (concealed and unconcealed) and fear and grief and joy, and he could hear a note of strain in her voice (faint, so faint, and the brush of the light on her skin -- _starfire,_ death -- was undoubtedly agony). Lennier was startled to note the faint widening of Neroon's eyes, as if the black-clad warrior heard it too.

"Valen said, 'Will you follow me into fire?'" and there was a weight of history, a weight of years, heavy as the stones in the walls of this bloodsoaked ancient place in Delenn's voice, a weight of stones and the assurance of years. Delenn had been (would always be) Satai. Delenn would always stand between the candle and the star, even if the star consumed her.

Shakiri hesitated. Lennier could see the beginnings of anger stirring beneath Neroon's carefully-calm exterior, the beginnings of triumph kindling in Delenn's eyes.

"Will you?" Delenn asked, still standing in the fire (in the center of the fire, dying by inches) and Lennier wished he could reach for her and dared not.

Delenn made him swear last night, made him promise, and he would never break a vow to her, that no matter what happened (and he had been confused by those words, but he was confused no longer) he would not interfere. Lennier had promised that no matter what, he would make sure Delenn completed her task (and her name, he thought now, would be remembered for a thousand years, written in the scrolls beside Valen, and if necessary Lennier would give his life to see it done) but he did not want to see her dead (he did not want her dead, but he had given his word and promises were sacred).

Shakiri did not move (was rooted to the spot) and Lennier was sure he was not the only one who could see the Warrior was afraid. Shakiri protested that this was madness.

Delenn asked Shakiri if he conceded leadership (calm, still, and surely she was in agony but she breathed as if she were meditating. The world -- their world -- was watching, and Minbari would speak of this, speak of a holy woman, prophecy-touched, and the temple of Varenni for a hundred generations hence).

The Starfire Wheel opened wider. The light grew more intense. Delenn (lips tight, face pale, still so unnaturally calm) refused to stagger.

Neroon (Neroon who Lennier had always hated, but who burned with the same inner fire as Delenn) asked Shakiri (and Neroon's voice was calm, as calm as Delenn's face, and reasonable), asked Shakiri why he was afraid. After all, Shakiri (Shakiri the brilliant orator) had said, in one of his many exhortations, that a Warrior did not fear death.

Shakiri stepped into the fire. (Resigned. Afraid. Unwilling).

Shakiri bent beneath the weight (the pain, which must be almost unendurable) of the light. The warrior leader's words, when he spoke to Delenn, were gasped and trembling. Shakiri asked Delenn to walk out with them (they could walk out together, he said, and find another way). Delenn (Lennier's beautiful Delenn) stood straight, firm (their whole world saw; the murmurs in the gallery were silent). Her face was white.

Delenn refused (Lennier wanted to pull her to safety, burned to pull her free of the devouring light even if it would consume him, but he had given his word).

Lennier remembered his early lessons (in history, in tradition). The tests of faith that Valen offered them were gentle (peace, meditation, fasting, the disciplines of body and mind, with devotion measured in commitment and repetition) compared to the test demanded by the temple of Varenni. In ancient times, the caste whose leader was willing to die (to be devoured by light and fire and pain; consumed so utterly that even the soul no longer remained) for the sake of his (or her) caste deserved to lead.

Delenn had surrendered, but she had never intended for the warrior caste to win (Lennier had seen it in her eyes last night, and misread it). Now Delenn would die.

Lennier had sworn his life to her (a secret vow, a blasphemous vow, and yet more precious to him than any words spoken in Valen's name, because Valen had really been only a man -- a human man -- with a secret and the words of Vorlons on his lips), had sworn his death to her, and if it would do any good he would pull her from the fire and take her place himself, but the Temple of Varenni demanded the best of them, demanded their leaders. (Delenn had made Lennier promise that no matter what, he would carry out her instructions -- her final instructions -- and the scroll case was a heavy weight against his chest).

The great eye (Starfire wheel, fountain of brilliant eye-searing death) opened further, and this time Delenn did stumble under the onslaught (stumbled, but did not cry out).

Lennier had sworn himself to Delenn (this life and death and the next), and with spots dancing in his eyes, he was about to reach for her anyway and promises be damned (the heat cascading off the column of light that engulfed Delenn was intense; Lennier wondered how she could stand it) when Shakiri jumped free of the Wheel and fell to the ground with smoke billowing about him, and two of aides sprang to Shakiri's side to assist him (Shakiri was moaning).

Delenn had won. Lennier saw a flash of naked triumph on her face and his heart swelled.

(With Shakiri's cowardice, it should have been over. It was not).

Delenn remained in the center of the fire. Delenn had never liked random factors, never liked mean square error, never liked leaving things to chance (not even her death, not when the fate of her caste, of her war-torn planet and crystal cities, were at stake). She would finish what she started, Lennier realized, gut twisting, mouth dry.

Two years before, Neroon had demanded a Warrior's funeral for Branmer (Branmer who had been a priest before he had heeded the call of a holy war and become one of the greatest of the Warriors even as he deplored with every breath the death he had dealt). Delenn had denied him, had stolen the body and had it cremated (starstuff, sent back into the universe) after Neroon had refused to heed the request of the religious caste to bury Branmer as a priest. Two (human) years before, Neroon had openly challenged Delenn. Not so long ago, he had tried to kill her.

All of these things, Lennier realized suddenly (multiplying, dividing, removing terms and coefficients until the equation became simple, y = x + z) had been for honor, for Minbar. Not the kind of honor Lennier understood perhaps (not the honor of the religious caste, not the quiet honor of the priests), but honor all the same. Promises. Vows. Conviction. Strength.

(_We may sometimes look like you, but we are not you. Never forget that_).

They would say later (_They_ always had something to say; the benefit of an outsider's perspective, commentary on the weaknesses of the proof after the axiom had demonstrated not to be unprovable after all) that what Neroon did next was unexpected. Delenn had always said that the mighty "they" understood nothing, and it seemed that they understood Neroon (Vows. Honor. Promises) least of all. That Neroon showed his convictions differently than Lennier, than Delenn (than Branmer, before Branmer died), Lennier realized in the space of the breath (just a breath) between _before_ and _after_, did not mean that Neroon lacked conviction, lacked faith.

The Starfire Wheel opened wider (great eye, giant eye, pitiless gaze) and the light that poured from it was almost too bright to endure. Beneath the onslaught, Delenn crumpled (and Lennier wanted to tear his gaze away, did not want to see her consumed, but she deserved a witness to her last moments.).

Lennier wished he could die in her stead. (He had sworn his life to her).

"NO!" the word sounded as if it had been torn from Neroon's throat, and the warrior plunged forward, plunged past Shakiri (Shakiri who was alive and moaning and Delenn lay motionless in the merciless gaze of the Wheel), past the other warriors, and into the burning light with Delenn.

Trembling with the pain, gasping, panting, Neroon bent down and scooped Delenn from the scorched stones, handed her through the blinding, burning, agonizing curtain of light (of fire; this would end in flame and dissolution, but not Delenn's. Not today) to Lennier.

Delenn was light, so light, in Lennier's arms (fragile as a tiny bird but alive and whole and he could not imagine what he, a blasphemer, had done to deserve such a blessing) and her skin burned as if with fever. Her eyes were closed, and she trembled, but she breathed (she _breathed_).

Neroon had taken Delenn's place in the circle (Vows. Honor. Promises. For the sake of Minbar). His knees were already crumpling, but there was iron in his voice. "I was born Warrior Caste, but I see now... The calling of my heart... is Religious! The war is over! Listen to her! Listen!" (The entire world was watching).

And then the Wheel opened wide, opened fully, and what poured through it was light and heat and flame and the heart of a star (and the ancients had not named it Starfire for nothing) and Lennier (Delenn heavy and unbalanced in his arms) staggered backward, staggered away, away (primal animal impulse, to flee certain death).

In seconds, Neroon was gone, consumed; nothing left of him but a charred circle on the ground, and the record of his words, which would remain until they all passed beyond the rim).

(_The calling of my heart is religious_).

The whole of Minbar had borne witness to Neroon's sacrifice (and they would speak of it as they had spoken of the coming of Valen, and Delenn, prophecy-touched and full of gentle fire, Lennier's Delenn, was alive and breathing).

(Neroon, Lennier thought, must have loved her too. For some reason it was a comforting thought).

They had won.

Delenn woke some hours later, exhausted and almost too weak to talk. When she had found her voice (dry, trembling, and it terrified Lennier to hear it; she sounded so lost), she had whispered to Lennier, "Where is Mayan? I sent to her before we came to this place. Why has she still not come to me?"

(Delenn, Lennier knew, had come here expecting to die. She had not. Of that, she said nothing).

##

_II. What the Thunder Said_

Mayan, who had once been _Shaal_ Mayan, though she knew with the certainty of stone and water (greater than the certainty of breath, which was eternally tenuous; life could falter at any moment, especially here at the end of the world) that she would never again take up the poet's mantle (never again sing the strains of _tee'la_, which evoked memory, because her very thoughts were now tainted with death), would never remember how she came to be here, to dwell (for now; all things were transitory) in the stillness of this temple, just (for now) another priest in subdued robes, one among many.

One among many, but apart. Mayan's hands, she knew, were stained with blood. For a thousand years since the coming of Valen, Minbari had not killed Minbari.

(That was true no longer).

Mayan remembered flames, smoke, screaming. Prayers that died half-formed on her lips. Two boys (not boys; men, transfigured in the fires of the burning world) who had come to bring her to this place of stillness and safety (two boys who she had invited into her kitchen, given tea, and refused). Later, two coarse men in Warrior black. Blood, in great pools (it smelled of metal rather than life, and it had been black in the flickering half-light of moonrise and a city burning), two pairs of eyes, wide and lifeless, and the knife in her own hand, and then nothing (Shadows, murmurs. Smoke).

(Now she was here).

Candles, incense, stone walls, and the measured and unceasing rhythm of devotion (morning, noon, and night, at the rising and the setting of the sun and the moon) and when Mayan had visited Earth two human years ago, still aching and branded, she had been startled to learn that their faiths (many faiths, not monolithic like the quiet religion of Minbar) moved to a similar beat as her own (matins, evensong, compline; Fajr, Duhr, 'Asr), and was startled to find sisterhood among those strange ones across the stars.

Then (two years ago, when her world was still whole and this madness not yet on them) Mayan had prayed in churches, chanted in synagogues. Prayer on Earth felt less alien than prayer here, now, amid the ashes of what had once been her world.

(It did not matter. Her prayers were no longer true).

The smooth stone walls, the golden midafternoon light slanting in, the heavy musky wax scent of the candles (candles on every world smelled different; on Earth, some of them had smelled sweet, like the insect secretion the humans called honey); all were as they had always been in her memory, all were as they had been since childhood. Familiar. Comforting.

(Wrong.)

All was stillness here, ever and unchanging. Outside the world -- _her_ world -- was choked with ash and thick with fading smoke and misery.

They left her alone, the other priests. Left her in peace (in silence). She ate alone. Slept alone, in one of the tiny cells given the novices, nothing more than four walls, a door, a little pallet, and solitude. The tiny room rang when the bells for the hours rang, and the vibration seemed to move through her aching bones. She would have prayed alone, but she could no longer speak the words (instead she lit candles at the requisite hours, her heart silent, pretending. It was not a lie, not precisely. The Minbari could, when necessary, measure truth in millimeters).

(She had once been one of them, another priest, but she was strange to them now, _Shaal_ Mayan, transfigured by the touch of blood and the stench of death. Other.)

She remembered moonrise, a knife in her hands, blood (not her blood) streaking over her bare belly, clotted and stiffening. It had been cold. They -- two men and a woman, in the robes of the _Anla'Shok_ (the Rangers); the woman had worn the vicious, spiralling bonecrest of the Warrior caste, and Mayan had drawn back against a wall, trembling -- found her sometime after (Days? Hours? It seemed to her that the light had the warm cast of late afternoon). They asked Mayan what had happened (the bloody knife was still in her hand. There was blood under her fingernails).

She had said she did not remember. It was the truth. They (and these Rangers too wore the faces of children too soon grown) must have brought her back to the temple after that.

(_I shall not allow my little ones to come to harm, not here in my great house_). It seemed even Valen was doomed to break his own promises.

Turval had been there in the temple when they brought her (Turval who was of the Eighth Fane of Tretomo and had had been priest before he was _Anla'shok_, round-faced with smile lines framing his eyes; he had taught Mayan laughter when she was a girl), Turval whose place was in Tuzanor with the Rangers and not here in a temple in Yedor with a murderess (there was blood on Mayan's hands, so much blood, but perhaps it was Turval's _Anla'shok_ that had tried to save her in the beginning, who brought her here now). Time must have passed again, unseen and unremarked because it was dark when the white-robed priests brought her to Turval's chambers.

(She had killed. Two men were dead at her hand. Her clothes had been soaked in blood. How strange that they did not bind her!)

She could never recall Turval's exact words (though she remembered his face ever after: grim, serious, stretched tight with grief and edged with compassion as he gazed down at her. She was not the solemn innocent he once knew). He said something about self-defense, survival, _instincts._ His voice was gentle. He tried to comfort her.

Mayan flinched, turned away from his outstretched hand even as she yearned for the kindness of her old teacher's touch, for contact, for normalcy. For warmth and light and an end to this. Forgetting. But she was a killer. She deserved no comfort, no ease. She did not, she said bitterly, want absolution. (So much blood. There had been so much blood. More than she could have imagined. It haunted her dreams).

(There were no guards. Why were there no guards watching her?)

They stood in silence for a few moments, Turval offering comfort, forgiveness, Mayan rejecting it. The humans (some humans, not all; their religions were a patchwork of similarities and distinctions it would take a determined scholar several lifetimes to unravel) had a concept known as _penance_. (In the Latin, a less complex tongue than Adronato, but beautiful in for all its simplicity; it had taken her less than a year to learn it: _Misereatur tui omnipotens Deus, et dimissis peccatis tuis, perducat te ad vitam æternam_). Confession. Contrition. Satisfaction. (Forgiveness). The Minbari had no such concept. ("See to your own house first," Valen had said. Valen had promised them peace in exchange for practicing the disciplines he had set them. Valen had lied. The world was burning anyway, a thousand years later).

(She deserved no absolution. She deserved to burn, burn with her world until the pain and the wrong was purged away).

The priests (she vaguely remembered Turval saying, words as insubstantial as shadows and smoke; drifting, fading) did not know what to do with her. There were no laws to deal with this, with the deaths of two warriors at the hands of a poet, no precedents, but it seemed fairly clear (fairly clear even if Mayan could not recall -- _insisted_ she could not recall, and for some reason the distinction was important to Turval -- what had happened to her before she had spilled the Warriors' blood) that this was a case of self-defense, not anger. That it was not premeditated, not rooted in evil thoughts; a crime of the hands (the blood had pooled thick on the floor) but not a crime of the heart. Not a sin of commission.

Surely, she had protested, surely there were ancient laws, from the days (the years, stretching back into the time before memory) before Valen, when Minbari had died at the hands of other Minbari, when wars erupted to engulf the world in flame and death and ash. Surely then they had known how to punish (cleanse, burn away) that which Valen had made unspeakable, unthinkable (almost unthinkable; there were so many dead now -- so many dead on both sides that not all of them had yet been buried or committed to flame, so many that there were not enough priests to say the rites -- and her beautiful crystal cities lay in ruins). Her voice had been raw and cracking and all the music that had filled her heart was lost to her (blood-soaked, tainted, unholy, impure).

(This is the way the world ends, the human poet had said).

Turval's face was solemn and the agony in his eyes pierced her heart (pierced what was left of it, and its withered husk stirred in her chest), tears pricked the corners of her eyes. Mayan wondered (distantly, so distantly; almost nothing seemed to matter now save the vast ache in the center of her chest) how long she had been here in this temple, how long it had been since she had done the unspeakable. He knew his history, he said. He knew the old laws, the old ways (the ways of the priests that had worshipped in the dark corridors of the Temple of Varenni, who had served the dark powers of the heart of the planet). They demanded death (_Isil me'lir_), a life for a life (fairness, an equal exchange, a soul for a soul; the humans, oddly, had a similar saying, "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth").

Turval looked pained when he spoke the words. (He did not understand).

Death would be welcome. Ending. Dissolution. The pain would pour out, and Mayan would be gone with it. Perhaps the wheel would turn beneath Mayan and she would begin another life, but she would not remember. The reborn never did. It would be over and the rending in her soul would cease.

(It would be a blessing. She did not deserve a blessing, but perhaps Valen -- if Valen watched over them any longer -- would grant her this one anyway).

Turval's eyes (his eyes, in her memory, were always smiling) were dark with agony and grief (grief for _Shaal_ Mayan-who-had-been, grief for the _Anla'shok_ who had died defending the defenseless, grief for his entire world). Turval had been one of her first teachers, and she could not bear to cause him any more pain. One of the first lessons Mayan learned in temple (learned alongside Delenn, who had once been closer than a sister, who had brought this upon all of them) had been silence. With a deep breath (what time was it? How long had she been here?) she stilled herself, held her tongue. Did not beg for death, for an end to pain.

The priests, Turval said, felt that Mayan should not be punished, that she had acted out of instinct, self-defense, that the world had gone mad and that no others should forfeit their lives to this madness.

Mayan should stay here, Turval said, cradled by the temple walls and surrounded by the spirit of Valen (but Valen had broken his word!) and heal. He looked old (and he had been young and merry when she had first come to him. She had been young then too).

The priests felt she should not be punished but none of them could meet her eyes at breakfast, at prayers (prayers when she only half-spoke the words, and her heart was filled with jagged stones and Valen had let harm come to his little ones).

 

Mayan was weeding in the kitchen garden (if she could offer nothing else to these priests who offered her safety but not surcease and could not meet her eyes, she could offer the labor of her hands), the weak spring sun barely warming her back, when the acolyte came to find her (he was young, so young, shy, eyes downcast; Mayan had been that young once but she was now as old as sin and evil and death, dark and ancient), begged her to come, to see. The war was ending, he said, and the elders asked all to bear witness (it should have been the Grey Council who asked, but the Grey Council was no longer. Delenn had broken it, and their world had burned for her sins).

Once (in the time before Valen, a time almost before memory, before the beginning of another Shadow War) the Temple of Varenni had been the center of Minbar, the place wars started, the place wars were settled, the place where souls ended in Starfire (an ending, whole and entire, a release), and their entire world had borne witness to what transpired in that temple carved from the womb of the world. The proceedings had been beamed, then, to the whole of Minbar, as they were being broadcast now.

(Perhaps others knew Valen, who was Minbari-not-born-of-Minbari would someday break his word to his chosen people, because the temple had been maintained. Empty. Waiting. Just in case).

It was said (in whispers, in this gallery of downcast eyes, row upon row of priests, the sleeves of their garments torn in the ritual of grief and there were so many dead and maimed and missing that the rituals seemed inadequate) that the leaders of the religious caste had gone to the Temple of Varenni to surrender, to kneel before the stronger Warriors, that accepting defeat in the interest of ending the bloodshed was more honorable than continuing to fight (that last was said in tones of false heartiness; it had always gone against the grain of the priests to bow to what was wrong even in the interests of peace).

(Have mercy, have mercy, oh have mercy on your little ones who are lost and alone and weak).

It was said that the leaders of the Religious Caste (Delenn. It would always be Delenn at the center of things, with that maddening look of calm on her face, Delenn who believed herself to be the child of prophecy, untouchable) had gone to the Temple of Varenni to surrender. One look at Delenn's eyes, at the set of her mouth (even distorted by the broadcast; once they had been closer than sisters, Mayan and her lovely, quiet-eyed Delenn) was enough to tell Mayan that surrender (defeat) was never what Delenn intended.

(Delenn claimed to serve Valen, to serve the truth, to serve her world, but what Delenn sought -- always -- was victory, at any cost).

Of course Delenn would step into the circle of Starfire, her face still and impassive (did she truly wish to perish for the sake of her caste, of her world, or did Delenn simply believe the universe would protect her?). Of course she would taunt Shakiri, taunt him with the consequences (death, destruction, a sacrifice in fire) of his wish to return to the old ways (and Shakiri looked terrified even before he bent under the weight of starfire, under the weight of sacrifice, before he jumped free of the column of ravenous light).

(Of course, Delenn, in the end, would seek to be greater even than Valen. Mayan should have expected nothing less).

A thousand years ago, or so the legends said, legends and records so degraded that the images were like faint shadows moving against the light, like ever-shifting afterimages burned on the retina and the voices whispered like the wind through winter grain, Valen had been the last to step into the Starfire Wheel. The leader of the Warriors (his name had been Arann, and he had been tall and whipcord thin and angry) had challenged Valen (had said he would rather their world fall to the Shadows, fall to a thousand years of darkness, than be led by a Minbari not born of Minbari, an outsider, an impostor), and Valen (so it was said) had asked that the challenge be settled at the Temple of Varenni.

"Will you follow me into fire? Will you follow me into death?" Valen had asked Arann (Delenn had asked Shakiri), and they had stepped into the light.

Valen and Arann had walked out of the wheel together (so the legend said), united, brothers, their souls forged together by the blinding light of death, and a thousand years (almost an eternity, but nothing, as their sages taught, was truly permanent) of peace had followed.

Delenn could have walked out behind Shakiri and his cowardice (could have done as Valen, to whom she had sworn vows, binding her in this life and the next), could have emerged from the light and still won. But nothing less than complete victory would do (ever) for Delenn. Nothing less than an act that would burn her name into legend for a thousand generations.

Of course Delenn would remain in the center of the circle, slowly consumed by starfire (of course she would offer her life in exchange for the long memory of the Minbari people). Her name would be spoken alongside Valen's, her name written beside his in the sacred scrolls.

(Delenn's arrogance had almost destroyed their world. It seemed somehow unfair that she would be remembered as a martyr for healing it).

Delenn believed (had so believed since she and Mayan had been girls in temple together, innocent, dreaming) that she was chosen (special), that the universe (Valen) watched out for her (_I will not let my little ones come to harm, not here in my great house_) but the truth was, everyone that loved Delenn (that served Delenn or called her to serve) died: Delenn's father. Dukhat. _Anla'shok_ beyond numbering. Priests and children driven out into the snow after Delenn broke the Council.

Neroon, in the Starfire Wheel.

(Delenn, held in the arms of Lennier, the young man who served her; Mayan had been one of his teachers when he was an acolyte in temple -- and how long would it be until he joined those others in death? -- still drew breath).

Mayan had killed two warriors (the priests had said, in self-defense. In defense of her own life). Delenn (dear Delenn, beautiful Delenn, and she claimed she served Valen, served the truth, but Delenn could measure and parcel out truth in grains too small to be seen by the naked eye) had killed so many others, by omission and commission, by her arrogance and by her order.

(Neroon had chosen death by fire but it was Delenn who had killed him).

##

_III. Memory and Desire_

Lennier (Lennier of the Third Fane of Chu'domo, temple novice, master-adept in mathematical statistics, and exactly none of this qualified him to hold the future of his world in his unlined, incapable hands) was not sure how long he had been awake. Days, certainly, and the hours stretched on like the endless horizon of the ice fields of the north, yawning now (it seemed) to weeks, months, thoughts swirling in his mind with the drugged slowness of exhaustion. He needed to sleep (wanted it desperately the way a drowning man clawed after air), but there was no time.

Delenn could have withstood this (these endless hours without rest, doing, doing, carrying the burden until the task was completed and it could be laid aside at last), had (he thought) withstood this in the past. Delenn was (had been, in the time before she broke the Council and everything changed) Grey; she knew the disciplines. Lennier was not, did not. He was an aide (Delenn's aide, and it was, would yet be, an honor to serve her), not a statesman. Not a leader. She knew this (_Even when you were looking up_, Delenn once said, _you were looking down_).

For some reason, Delenn had put the little metal cylinder (the scroll, her last wishes, her _intentions_, her instructions) in Lennier's hands when she went (she believed, perhaps even hoped, though that did not even bear contemplation) to her death, to dissolution in Starfire. His hands, not Durhan's or Turval's (Turval who had been her teacher, who had been _Anla'shok Na_ \-- Ranger One -- before Jeffrey Sinclair, before Delenn), not Rathenn, not Codroni who had worn the Grey robes and stood alongside her (stood between the candle and the star). Delenn's will had passed to Lennier. He did not understand. He was not ready.

He had sworn himself to her, in this life and the next. He was not ready, but Lennier would carry Delenn's burdens (and perhaps someday she would explain, and the thought that she could -- that she yet lived -- made Lennier's heart lift). It was his duty.

 

He must have slept for a little while, Lennier thought (every hour, every minute of rest he could snatch from the vast gaping jaws of duty was precious; he wondered how Delenn, for so many years, had borne the burden) because he suddenly found himself starting awake from a half-remembered dream of light and fire and Delenn's (beautiful Delenn's) hand just out of reach, and John Sheridan (Starkiller, though Lennier would never use that epithet in Delenn's hearing because she loved the Starkiller -- John; they were to be married, and she was already Watching her John, her Starkiller, while he slept) placing himself between Lennier and his mistress, holding her forever away from Lennier.

For a moment his gaze darted around the the room he occupied here in the City of Sorrows (the priests had brought Delenn back here, back to the city of the Rangers who she led as _Entil'zha_, the One, as soon as she could be moved), in the temple which served the _Anla'shok_. The chamber was tiny and close, and but for the fact that the walls were made of the native stone of Tuzanor, which is blue-grey, they might have been the quarters he'd occupied after he took his first oaths as a novice and left the Hall of Acolytes. Same hard little cot, same bare walls. They'd offered him better quarters, said he merited them as Delenn's _Atha'ven_, her voice, the one who spoke to the outside world when she could not (the humans had no sense of poetry: they had a similar concept, but they called it, soullessly, bloodlessly, 'Power of Attorney') but he'd refused. This little room was closer to Delenn; he could be at her side at a moment's notice).

It took him a moment to realize what had woken him: the sound of a bell drum, the sound of the novice who walked steady and unspeaking through the temple halls ringing the hours (whose duty, whose _discipline_ was keeping time). It had been Lennier's duty to ring the hours, years upon years ago, and he had found a gentle sort of peace in the measured cadence of his days, in the constant awareness of the minute (of the moment).

Vir, who was Centauri in body and past experience if not in soul (Vir was nothing like his kin, nothing like the expansive Ambassador Mollari who he served; Vir was quiet and serious and worried about justice, and reminded Lennier of some of the boys he'd known in temple) had been surprised that religion, that ritual, that _worship_ was so much a part of Minbari life (as far as the Centauri, and many other races, were concerned, the Minbari were the next best thing to the First Ones, to be honored and feared and sought out for their wisdom; how little these races knew). The Centauri regarded religion as superstitious, as a form of mind control, a drug for the masses, unworthy of the oldest of the Younger Races.

At the time, Lennier had sat at the bar (he and Vir always met there, even though Minbari did not drink alcohol. Lennier wasn't sure how it had started, but it had quickly become habit) and argued with his Centauri friend, argued with him about the virtues of believing in a higher power, the strength that the ritual disciplines brought.

Vir had merely looked at him with interest and mild disbelief.

After Babylon 4, Lennier began to suspect Vir may have been right about everything. Jeffrey Sinclair (another human, and humans were so weak; they could not hope to stand against a Minbari warrior and survive) seemed like such a small, frail vessel to carry the wisdom of the universe. Jeffrey Sinclair (who had become Valen, who Lennier's people -- in error -- revered almost as the Centauri had once, before they had put aside childish things (Vir said), did honor to their Hundred Little Gods) was a tool of the Vorlons, a weapon (perhaps carefully chosen) and sent to end an ancient war. Nothing more.

All living things were frail, fragile, _small_. Wanting. The universe was vast. (Delenn said that they were all starstuff, and she was right, but they were only tiny fragments of Creation). To think that the vastness was knowable by any mortal creature, that any tiny mind could encompass it (to revere anything mortal as the Voice of the universe seemed unthinkable arrogance). He would not worship Valen, but he would serve Delenn (Delenn did not pretend to wisdom, though she sought it).

The bells passed by, faded out of hearing. It was an hour after sunrise. The priests and priestesses would be returning from morning prayers, sitting down to a simple breakfast in the refectory before they went off to what duties called them. (Vir had been surprised, when Lennier had told him that back home, back on Minbar, Lennier was a mathematician -- back when Lennier still believed, back when Lennier knew the truth -- that priests did more than simply pray. Vir was surprised by many things). Some, mostly the young and the old, would stay and turn their hands to the service of the temple (the service, Lennier knew now of arrogance, of nothing at all), but most would go elsewhere: teachers, healers, clerks, artists, singers of songs, separate, but all bound together by a faith he no longer shared.

Delenn, Lennier knew, would be awake, would have woken at dawn out of habit (her healers had tried to make her rest, urged her to sleep, _Lennier_ had urged her to rest, but the rhythms of the temple were in her bones and would not be denied), would have demanded that the shades on the window be thrown open to admit the first light of day, would have murmured morning blessings and prayers. Delenn prayed, he knew, for Neroon, and they were the old prayers, the stone prayers, the words to lead him home to the Sea of Stars beyond the Rim. She prayed for their people (and Lennier could not understand, had never been able to understand why she would; the Grey Council and so many of their people had cast her aside when she had changed to become a bridge between Minbari and Human and had welcomed her back -- now -- only because she had stood in the pitiless gaze of Starfire when no other would).

(Delenn said her faith was in the universe, that it was possible to know the true origin of Valen and yet believe; _We are the universe made manifest, trying to figure itself out._ She urged Lennier to pray with her. He could not.)

Lennier wished he could spend the day at Delenn's bedside (she was still so pale, so terrifyingly weak, and sometimes lost and frightened, as if the starfire had stripped away some of her essence) but an endless slew of meetings, calls to make, documents to authorize (and in some cases, when they were particularly important, to sign by hand, on paper, and he thought after carrying Delenn's last words, that he would ever after have an aversion to words scribed in ink on paper).

The work of remaking the world was unexpectedly tedious, mundane.

Lennier rose, dressed (it had startled him, initially, how quick his morning ablutions were when they were not punctuated by prayers and blessings), gathered his things, and left the tiny room. He would have the boy who served him as an aide (Nafiel, Lennier thought his name was) bring food up to him later; Lennier was not of a mind to share his morning meal with others, not of a mind to force himself into the grooves of polite everyday behavior, not of a mind to feel the prying eyes of the other priests on his back while he ate.

(They would not question Delenn, not openly, not after the Temple of Varenni, but Lennier knew many of the priests here thought him a strange choice to be Delenn's _Atha'ven_. Too young. Too inexperienced. Not even yet come to the robes of a _Mir'aal_. Had they known his inner thoughts, Lennier thought they might add _too angry_ and _without faith_ to the list of his flaws).

They had given him a workroom at the temple, a vast chamber with a floor of polished wood that glowed as if with an internal light, a beautiful space which would spill over with sunlight in the early afternoon, filled with lovely, simple things: a desk which had been handmade by artisans on some far-flung colony of a wood whose grain was marked with swirls of green and blue, a Narn sculpture from the days before the Centauri had ravaged their world (and so many were surprised to find that the Narn, now such an angry, vengeful people, hardened under the boot-heels of their Centauri oppressors, had once shaped metal into such graceful shapes), candles, brightly-colored cushions (they were silk, and Lennier knew from his reading that the fine threads were the secretions of a tiny insect) from the Earth nation the Humans called India. This should have been Delenn's space. She would have loved it. (Lennier would have been content with an inner room and a computer terminal, and he longed for solitude he would not enjoy again until Delenn healed).

(Lennier had sworn to serve Delenn for all of his days. He would bear this weight because she asked it of him).

Barely more than an hour past dawn was an early hour for visitors although courtesy did not forbid it, particularly if the matter was urgent and the person seeking an audience had waited until after morning devotions. Nonetheless, Lennier was startled to see the figure waiting patiently outside his workroom (Delenn's workroom; Lennier occupied it only temporarily, until Delenn was well), dark-robed and hooded (and they were the black robes of a Warrior, not the cloak of the _Anla'shok_ or the heavy dark vestments of the _Mir'aal_ who guarded the Inner Mysteries). From the shape of the figure and the figure's posture, Lennier was fairly sure his visitor was a man, probably an old one, though the visitor's hood was deep and filled with shadow and Lennier could not see his face.

Lennier had hoped for a little quiet, a little space to breathe, a few conscious hours where he could be himself instead of _Atha'ven_ Lennier and allow himself (for a few brief moments) to feel lost, to feel afraid (Delenn's hands and voice could not afford that luxury) but the rituals of hospitality had been graven in his bones since even before he had come to the temple for his training. He steepled his hands, bowed deep. "Be you welcome in this place," he said gravely, opening the door to the workroom and motioning his visitor to precede him through.

The man stepped through the door, moving carefully, as if he were infirm or in pain. An old man, then, surely. An old warrior, come to seek an audience with Delenn. A few had; the _F'hursna_ \-- the pikemasters -- of several clans: their training in many ways paralleled that of the priests, and they sought inner stillness and truth and balance as their highest goal; they came to make amends to their brothers in the priesthood, and to seek Delenn's wisdom. Lennier and her healers had urged Delenn to rest, but she had insisted on seeing these Warriors (three had come from the Night Walkers, and one had been a woman. They had always been the most progressive of the warrior clans, and many of them had stood aside during the fighting, sought refuge offworld or in the temples. Shakiri had condemned their behavior, declared them dishonorable). Delenn insisted on seeing the _F'hursna_ privately, so none knew what they spoke of. Some stayed for hours. All emerged looking peaceful, eased.

(_She changes everything she touches, and everything she touches, changes_).

Lennier's visitor waited for him to close the door before the visitor steepled his own hands and bowed deeply. "I am made welcome in this place. My host does me great honor." His voice was resonant (and oddly familiar) when he spoke the ritual words, his Adronato slightly accented; he clearly preferred the Lenn'ah of the Warriors; he spoke with great care that suggested he spoke the language of the priests well but infrequently. So it was with many Warriors, particularly the old ones. So many kept to their own rituals (rituals of fire and pageantry and pomp and drumming) and came to the temples only on the holiest of Holy days. (The Warriors were, had always been, a world unto themselves).

The visitor's hood shielded his face. To remain cloaked for this long upon entering an inner chamber verged on rudeness; if it went on for many moments longer, it would become outright insult. (And it was strange that the man behaved in this way, for the custom of face-honesty was shared among the three castes and predated Valen). Lennier felt himself start to bristle, but held his tongue. The ritual words had been spoken and the man had accepted Lennier's hospitality. Surely there was a reason for his behavior; surely the reason would become clear soon enough.

Lennier turned and began setting out the cups for tea, filling the pot with hot water from the kettle that Nafiel kept filled and always at the ready (Lennier had begun to think that he could come to this workroom at the darkest hour of the night and there would be hot water). A blend of early-spring herbs called _l'chai_ would be appropriate for the early hour, and the astringent smell of the brew seemed alien to him now; Delenn now favored Earth teas in the morning, and Lennier had grown used to the smooth richness of English Breakfast, the hint of smokiness in Russian Caravan. It had been a long time since he had brewed this particular tea for anyone (since Mayan had visited three Earth years ago, he thought; Delenn reserved her mornings for meditation and work, and seldom received visitors early enough to warrant this particular brew. Lennier had never expected when he went away to Babylon 5 (when he answered the call to serve Delenn) that home would seem so alien when he returned.

(Lennier had never expected to learn the truth about Valen, to lose his faith, his center. Many things were different outside the temple).

"I appreciate your receiving me so early and with no notice, _Atha'ven_ Lennier," the stranger said while Lennier's back was still turned. (That was almost-rudeness too). Lennier wondered if the visitor meant insult -- his careful speaking of the ritual words suggested not -- or if he for some reason feared face-honesty, or if he was ashamed. So many of the Warriors who came to the temple to pray after the fires had gone out came cloaked and hooded; many apologized and said they veiled their faces out of deep shame for what they had done. The priests excused them, said it was no insult, respected their shame (the Warriors had different forms of atonement, the _Mir'aal_ agreed).

"It is no trouble," Lennier said. "There were no pressing matters awaiting me." (He wanted to protest that he selfishly longed for solitude, for a few minutes to just _be_ even if he no longer prayed or meditated, but custom -- politeness -- demanded otherwise.) He took a deep breath, poured two cups of tea (the steam rose up towards the ceiling), spoke the ritual words (he meant nothing by the blessings, but though they were as dust in his mouth, the forms must be followed. He would not dishonor Delenn by doing otherwise). "Do you come to speak with me, or to seek an audience with Delenn? Her healers permit her to see very few."

"I would speak with Delenn," the man said (and how familiar his voice was, deep, resonant, and sparking memories of close tunnels, of stone, of heat). Lennier set the teapot down, its contents sloshing with the trembling of his hands, took a step back, horror and rage warring within him before the visitor even began to (hesitantly, so hesitantly) push back the hood that covered his face in shadow.

(Lennier knew already what he would see. He was right).

Lennier had seen Shakiri orate (the man was a powerful speaker, seemed larger than life, even if his hateful words kindled nothing but fury in Lennier and a terrible sadness in Delenn), had seen him at the Temple of Varenni, frightened but straight-backed and speaking strong words. The man seemed diminished now; old, thin, shrunken, stooped, and Shakiri's face was seamed with lines that had not been there a few days ago, and spangled, here and there, with healing burns. It was as if the Wheel had stripped something essential from the man, leaving behind nothing but a shell.

Lennier could not find it in himself to pity the man. "How dare you come here? How dare you ask to speak with her when it was your actions that nearly killed her?" His voice sounded so strange in his ears, cold and threaded through with dark rage. He looked away from Shakiri's eyes, unwilling to face the sadness and regret in the old man's gaze (unwilling to be moved to compassion by the man who had nearly destroyed them all).

"I did not ask her to come to the Temple of Varenni. I did not ask _Satai_ Delenn to enter the Starfire Wheel," and it was strange that he used the honorific now, when he had spoken to -- and of -- Delenn with such contempt just a few days before, in that strange temple at the heart of the world. It was strange also that Shakiri's voice held no anger, only resignation. "That choice was hers."

Lennier felt for a moment as if he was watching himself from some far remove, as if his voice belonged to some other person, this rage, this hate to some other soul. It did not seem to belong to this light-filled room, to this space that should be Delenn's. He could not help himself. "You made it necessary," Lennier replied coldly.

"My actions fractured our world," Shakiri admitted ('fractured' seemed like such a small and inadequate word for the flames, the burning, the children who perished after being driven out into the snow). "To save us all, Delenn made a choice which nearly killed her, and Neroon -- brightest of us all, and he was to have been _Zhaden'na_, warleader, after me -- sacrificed himself to the Wheel."

"You have no right to be here. You are a coward and _wynd'shok_," and to call another Minbari a liar, literally an enemy of the truth, was a mortal insult. Lennier did not care. It did not matter. Shakiri no longer had any honor to defend (had lost his honor at the Temple of Varenni, when the starfire had revealed him for what he was) and could not challenge Lennier to _denn'sha_, an honor battle to the death.

Lennier expected anger, impotent fury from the man who had ignited the fires that nearly consumed their world. Instead, Shakiri bowed his head before Lennier (a warleader bowed his head before a younger man, not even yet fully sworn to the temple and the life of a priest). "I am _wynd'shok_," Shakiri said softly. "And I have come to beg Delenn's forgiveness for my actions."

It was too late for regrets, too late for apologies. What had been done to their world (what Shakiri, in his arrogance, had done to their world) was too great, too terrible to be accounted for in an apology. He glared at the old man (the stooped old man, and why had he ever been afraid of Shakiri?) in contempt.

Lennier drew himself up, and his voice was cold, hard as stone, and almost as brittle. "I will not disturb Delenn's rest, jeopardize her recovery with a visit from a coward and a traitor. Find your forgiveness somewhere else."

Lennier did not even have to order Shakiri from the room. The man seemed to fold in on himself as he drew up his hood once again, and let himself out.

The two mugs of tea sat cooling, untouched, on the side table.

(How was it that Shakiri, _wynd'shok_, coward, destroyer of worlds, beloved of no one, would come to seek an audience with Delenn, but Mayan who had been, since childhood, Delenn's best beloved friend, would not?)

##

_IV. That Corpse You Buried in Your Garden_

Mayan had always loved the temple gardens (even when she was a small child carried on her father's shoulders) and she thought sometimes that it was the gardens even more than the pull of _tee'la_, even more than the endless demands of the words that crowded her mind and the images that thronged her soul that drew her to take the vows that bound her to the priesthood in this life and the next. In summer, the gardens were green leaves against crystal and stone, profligate and overflowing with blossoms and the heavy sweet scent of growing things, of the botany of desire, at once disciplined and utterly wild (at once at odds with and one with the quiet solemnity of temple life), a celebration of the life that Valen (that her people) held sacred above all else. In summer, the gardens breathed deep, and echoed with the song of _temshwee_, the tiny golden birds. In the winter, her beloved gardens were no less beautiful (there was beauty, she learned, in simplicity, in austerity, and the winter gardens taught her how to paint with light and empty space). They were snow and stone, whiteness and stillness and reflected light, the ephemeral crystal of icicles that hung from tree limbs, and the sound of snow creaking quietly under her booted feat and her breath condensing into mist against the winter sky. And always, always fountains and the sound of falling water.

(In later years, when she prayed, when she spoke the sacred words of _tee'la_, Mayan thought of the sound of water singing, of the rainbows cast by tumbling droplets in the green-golden sunlight of a spring afternoon).

The burning never reached within the walls of Valen's great temple in Yedor, never defiled it with the weighty, ugly touch of smoke and anger. Had Mayan allowed the _Anla'shok_ to bring her here within the temple walls before two black-clad warriors steeped in blood had come to visit her in the dark of a night filled with smoke and screaming, would Mayan still have her faith? Would she have learned to pray again after all?

(Valen taught that the past could be a burden, and that it should be released when it became so. But what was a person to do when the past refused to release _her_?)

For a moment, for a few breaths, Mayan might come to the garden and, surrounded by greenery and the sharp scent of sacred herbs and the silence of the novices who tended all that grew here from the tiniest sprout to the tallest tree with the same gentle, loving care, and she might pretend that the world was still whole, that the sun and the moons still rose over the same city Mayan knew as a girl (she wrote her first poem about the crystal towers of Yedor in the rain, about prisms great and prisms small and the gentle comforting roar of rain falling in torrents on a spring morning, and they sang it even now). Eventually, she would catch the scent of ash on the ever-shifting wind, and remember, but for a little while (and all of our lives are measured in little whiles; they march by in an endless stream until they run down to nothing) there was just the warmth of the sun and the quick verdant stillness of growing things.

(Mayan the unbeliever no longer belonged in this place -- _to_ Mayan, priestess and singer of _tee'la_ and the one Delenn trusted above all others).

Lennier could have been a poet (he had the gift, the love of language, the still, attentive eye of the observer) but he preferred the quiet simple order and the solitude of mathematics. Still, he (this shy boy who did not like to speak into silence and could not meet her eyes) and Mayan always understood one another (he said mathematics was its own kind of poetry, that it made order out of disorder and sense from nothingness and soothed the soul). Lennier (Mayan thought) would serve Delenn with heart and hands and soul, and would look on the strangeness of the universe beyond Minbar with open eyes that saw clearly.

Mayan was (once, in a time that now seemed outside of time) so proud of Lennier (Lennier who Delenn said stood tall, had learned to look up; Lennier who embraced a young Centauri as his closest friend and did not treat young Vir as _Other_) as if he were her own rather than merely her student (albeit a brilliant one, albeit one of her favorites) in temple.

Now he stood before her in the slanting golden light of dusk, and the insects hummed all around him and the smell of crushed herbs rose where he had stepped, and he was no longer a boy but a man grown (tempered in fire), and he was beautiful. He no longer spoke with his eyes cast down, but instead raised his gaze (his gaze so full of a pain she could not even name) to meet Mayan's.

(It was a pity she did not want to see him now, that Delenn's touch on him now seemed to Mayan more like taint than blessing).

"Delenn has been asking for you," Lennier said without preamble, and his voice was still glorious even in speech; what a singer he might have made! "She wonders why you have not yet come to her."

The splashing of the fountain, the calls of the _temshwee_ feeding on the tender buds -- at once harsh and melodious -- suddenly seemed so far distant, and Mayan's hands were icy. She remembered vaguely (fog drifting on the river, shadows dancing at the edge of the candle's flame) that the day before Delenn stepped into the circle of fire (For her world? Because of her own arrogance? Because she genuinely believed?), the day before Neroon passed from the world in a gasp and a sudden burst of light with the words of conversion fresh on his lips, a messenger (_Anla'shok_. They were always _Anla'shok_. They lived for the One. They died for the One. For Delenn) had come to the temple, braving Warriors and fire and despair and perhaps death to bring Mayan a plea from her oldest (her oldest but dear no longer) friend.

(_I go tomorrow to the Temple of Varenni. Will you come and hear my words tonight, my dearest one?_)

Mayan thought (though her recollection swam like heat rising from stone; so much was still strange then, filtered through shock and blood and distorted) that she raged at the cloaked one (the one who wore the brooch they called _isil'zha_, the future, and it was strange that so many who wore it died in distant places) who brought the message from Delenn. Mayan knew her history (_tee'la_ evoked memories of the past both recent and distant), knew the way that wars once ended in that temple in the womb of the world (that they ended in light, in fire, in annihilation) knew (in her heart) what Delenn must be planning (victory, not surrender), knew that the words Delenn summoned her dearest one to hear were meant to be Delenn's last.

The thought should have kindled grief in Mayan's heart, should have brought tears (in a distant way she knew this, remembered two girls huddled together in a storm, remembered the curve of Delenn's bonecrest illuminated by lightning, remembered the gentle roundness of her dear one's cheek in the days before prophecy had made Delenn strange and arrogant and resolute) but instead it stirred a slow, clotted rage (dark and dull and heavy-smelling like cooling pools of blood in moonlight), and this Mayan thought, is the fury she should have felt on that night when two strong Warriors died at her hand (but if she recalled anything of that night it was the quick sharpness of terror), and what had once been love turned to hate and ash in her mouth.

"I will not hear her words. I have nothing to say to the one that broke the Grey Council, who broke Valen's oath. She is _Zha'Valen_ to me." (a shadow upon Valen, a shade, empty shell without soul, dead in all ways except that the one so named continued breathing. She spat the words at the _Anla'shok_ messenger like the curse that they wore. And how strange her voice sounded, deep and thick and rough, without music, hateful, as if the blood that spilled over her belly that night (that night she could not remember, but she knew she had killed with her own hands and that was condemnation enough) had washed all that was lovely from Mayan, leaving nothing but emptiness and sin and rage.

The ranger had looked startled, horrified, his face paling as he stared at her. "Shaal Mayan --" and inside Mayan, the hate curled with satisfaction, and she felt herself smiling (and no doubt the man thought her mad; perhaps she was, and it did not matter but perhaps this madness would kill her and she could begin anew. The priests would not punish her, but they would not let her go to the stars and she could not face a lifetime of waiting).

"I have given you my answer," Mayan had told the cloaked one (how cold her voice was, how hard, how rough), "and I know you are bound to carry it. Leave me." And she had turned away from him, strode into the cool (comforting) darkness of the temple corridors, and let the night swallow her.

Now Lennier stood here before her in the temple garden (in the sun, surrounded by birdsong, even if Mayan could feel the darkness close about her, breathing) and the look he turned on her was not the look of the shy student, but the look of one who had looked into the heart of the universe and seen its darkness (penetrating, understanding, as if he looked through her and saw something he recognized and she could feel a shiver pass over her). Lennier, she realized, was angry (and it was not a boy's anger, not an acolyte's, but a priest's, a _man's_).

"The Ranger that came to find you brought your words to me first," Lennier said, taking a step closer (he crushed more herbs under his feet, intentionally careless, and she wondered why) and a green scent rose up to wreath him and his face was implacable. "And as well he did. Your words would have killed her."

"You lied to her?" and the words were drawn from her in a whisper (and why should Mayan care if another had rejected the sacred, if a blasphemer served the one she called _Zha'Valen_?).

"I told her nothing," Lennier corrected, eyes hard.

"What would it have mattered if my words killed her?" Mayan spat and she could feel the hatred singing its triumph and underneath it (why?) fear shrilling in a thin reedy voice. "Since she meant to kill herself anyway, had Neroon not found the calling of his heart at the last moment?"

Mayan was unprepared for the sharp hard sting of Lennier's palm striking her face, and staggered backwards, stumbling over a root and falling in the soft wet grass. "You are disrespectful," Lennier said, his eyes blazing (and in his voice was the censure of a fully-fledged priest and he barely more than a boy, but she could not help but quail before him and wondered at this change in the boy she had once called _Aha'es_ after the small brown rodent that hid in crevices). "And you are a coward. But _she_ will not rest until she sees you, and I will not let you hurt her."

The acolytes gathered their baskets, their clippers, turned their faces carefully away from Lennier and Mayan (from their little tableau; impromptu, unstaged) so as not to bear witness to another's shame (the prohibition was ingrained in them, as it had been ingrained in Mayan, in Lennier, even in Delenn, from childhood, and Mayan wondered fleetingly on which one of the two of them the young ones thought the shame fell), walked quietly away while the dampness from the grass soaked into Mayan's clothing and small stones dug into her palms and she stared (in shock) up at Lennier. This boy (more a man, but new-come to his manhood, with his final oaths still unspoken and subtle curves yet to be carved into the crest of bone that circled his skull) was no high priest, no _mir'aal_ to forbid Mayan anything (he presumed, this little one, and what was in his eyes was not wisdom but passion and anger, those twin demons that Ashan wrote of, the ones that led a soul, all unwitting, down the path to darkness) and she was torn between fury and laughter at the unearned indignation on the boy's (Lennier's) face.

Lennier's years with Delenn, out among the stars, had changed him (transfigured him; strange alchemy of maturation), though it remained to be seen whether the heat of other stars and the cold flame of the Shadow War had forged and annealed him or merely left him strange and warped from true.

(How dare he strike her, this impertinent boy?)

Mayan stood slowly, putting distance between the two of them, watching Lennier warily lest he move toward her again; her cheek throbbed and she would have a bruise come morning (whether it would remind her of her hatred or Lennier's furious disrespect, she was not yet sure).

"It is not your place, _shai'mir_," and she spat the word for acolyte at him like an insult; inwardly Mayan shook with a fury that terrified her, "to tell me what I may or may not do, much less to touch me uninvited." (Lennier, she noted with a certain grim satisfaction, flinched).

"I serve Delenn," Lennier said, recovering his composure, and his voice was firm, even (and Mayan had never expected her tall shy _Aha'es_ to speak with such strength or such anger). "She has given her will to me, and until she is well, I am her hands, her eyes, her voice. I carry her authority and may order you or not as I choose."

Certainly, Lennier believed this to be true. But it was also a cardinal rule of power-over that without force, and Mayan did not think that Lennier (even this Lennier, changed as he was from the boy she once knew) would resort to force any greater than striking her, such power had to be acknowledged by the other party. Mayan would not grant power to this boy, even if he carried Delenn's will and her writ).

"I do not recognize Delenn's will _or_ your authority, _Shai'Mir_ Lennier," Mayan said coldly, and she knew she would ever after think of this encounter when she walked in this garden and there would be nowhere safe for her anymore, nowhere she could forget, even for a moment, that everywhere she knew had been touched by Delenn's fires of unmaking. "Delenn swore herself to Valen, to this world, but she broke Valen's promises, broke the Grey Council, started this war, and now Minbari have killed Minbari and our cities are in ruins," and she could hear her voice breaking and once Mayan would have been ashamed but now (things were different now) she simply did not care.

"Delenn did what she felt was right. When the Grey Council would not fight the Darkness, she had no other choice," Lennier protested and now he was on the defensive, defending _Delenn_, and the strange mantle of authority he had drawn around himself moments earlier dissipating like mist in the morning sunlight. Mayan knew (now, with a shock of realization) that Lennier drew strength not from Valen to whom he was sworn, but from _Delenn_ (and did the woman corrupt all that she touched, turning peace into war and innocent boys into blasphemers?).

"Delenn," Mayan said, quietly, angrily (containing her fury in a near-whisper so that she would not scream), "has always assumed that she was special, that she was the One. She has always believed in her own rightness She can be very convincing," and once, Mayan believed Delenn, and how honored Mayan had felt to know (to be the chosen friend of) the One out of prophecy. "But just because this is truth to her does not mean this is actually true. It does not mean that you should believe her."

(_One who was, One who is, and One who will be._ Mayan wished she still believed, for then she would not feel this consuming grief, this bone-deep hatred.)

"Delenn's actions were necessary," Lennier ground out between his teeth. "You were not there. You did not see. You cannot know." And he took a step toward her, towering, threatening. His eyes blazed.

(She would not run. She would not fear him).

"I have nothing more to say to you, Lennier of the Third Fane of Chu'domo. I have nothing more to say to your mistress. She brought this upon our world with her arrogance, and she is Zha'Valen to me now," and the words were metal and ashes in her mouth but they tumbled from her lips nonetheless. "Go now." She turned.

"I know what you did," Lennier said to her back, and his voice was dark.

Mayan felt the laugh bubble up, knew it was hysterical, helpless, more than a little mad (and mostly it did not bother her). "All of Minbar," she said and her voice sounded alien in her ears, almost lighthearted, "probably knows what I did. It does not matter." It was twenty steps from this little, low wall to one of the doorways of the temple, along a gravel path that grated under her soles, a step up, and into the coolness held within the sacred walls (light streamed in everywhere).

Lennier did not follow.

(It was a dark mirror she passed through on that night when everything changed).

##

_V. The Lady of Situations_

In the evenings just after the sun dipped below the horizon, as the priests woundtheir way to the evening meal after their devotions in little knots of two and three, talking (and Delenn would not sleep until after Lennier had been and gone, and her healers hated it; they wanted her to rest, to heal, but Delenn's concerns, as always, lay elsewhere) Lennier brought Delenn news of the world outside, sometimes things to read, things to sign (he avoided it when he could, wanting to spare her the slightest strain, but there were some things he could not do even as her _Atha'ven_), and occasionally a visitor. Sometimes _Sech_ Dukhat accompanied Lennier, carrying his reports for _Entil'Zha_. The healers always glared at him (but there was nothing they could do; Lennier would have been more than happy to comply with their wishes, but Delenn was insistent). Tonight, Lennier came alone.

Someone had been here before him. Two candles burned on the little altar beside the door (Delenn and her visitor had spoken prayers. The candles were cast of dark blue wax. Prayers of forgiveness, then). Delenn and her visitor had talked for awhile after: a pot for tea and two thin porcelain cups sat on the little table beside the bed, and he could smell the sweet scent of the herb the humans called peppermint. Delenn, over the years, had taught those close to her to love peppermint tea, and one of the _Anla'shok_ had discovered that the hardy little peppermint plant (_Mentha x piperita_ by the human naming convention) thrived happily in the soil of Tuzanor. (Delenn, like _Mentha x piperita_ thrived in almost every soil, no matter how far from home).

Delenn was propped up in bed when he walked through the door, looking tired but (for once) not exhausted (perhaps she had finally begun to recover from her ordeal in the Temple of Varenni). Normally she smiled at him (sometimes warmly, sometimes weakly, but his heart always leapt at upward curving of her lips, however faint; even now ravaged and stripped to her essence by starfire, Delenn was lovely), but tonight she did not. What swam in her eyes tonight was a dark, infinite sadness, though there was compassion in her expression when she gazed at Lennier. She said nothing (and there was never any use pressing Delenn, even if it would not be a breach of respect, a breach of etiquette. She would tell him in her own time, or not at all, as the situation moved her. It was not Lennier's place to question her, but merely to serve. Even as _Atha'ven_, he served).

In the streets they were already calling her _Delenn suvelo_, Delenn the Wise, and they spoke her name and Neroon's with the same reverence given to Valen's name. Lennier hated it, because Delenn and Neroon were (had been) only people. Wise people, perhaps people who have heard the Voice of the universe at some distance and understood a few of the words, but flesh and blood and not objects for worship.

"Good evening, Lennier," her voice was still weak but it no longer trembled as it had for the past several nights, and he let out the breath he did not realize he had been holding. (He felt lucky to be able to worry for her; it meant she was still alive, still breathing. In the Temple of Varenni, until Neroon had intervened, Lennier had not expected to be so lucky ever again).

"Delenn." He was already picking up the brush that lay on the bedside table. A hairbrush was an alien object to their people; Lennier had had to search Delenn's belongings in her quarters aboard the White Star that had brought them here to find it (feeling, the whole time, like a thief, an interloper, a violator of sacred precincts). Delenn kept beautiful things with her when she traveled (they were all, Lennier supposed, reminders of something, shorthand for stories he did not know, stories she had not seen fit to tell him): a fragment of green quartz from Narn, a pendant of wrought silver from Centauri prime, a tiny Brakiri sculpture, no longer than Lennier's little finger, a blank book in the Earth style, made of heavy soft paper and bound in blue; she had covered at least half the pages in her spare, neat handwriting, and before he shied away from looking, knowing he should not be prying in her business, he realized they were letters (unsent letters, private ones): letters to John Sheridan (Starkiller, and she began them with "John, my love," and sometimes she wrote them in English); letters to Dukhat, her mentor (dead these ten years and more), letters to her dear Mayan (not so dear anymore, and Lennier could not help but think of the bitter, furious woman in the temple garden). Letters about lofty ideas, about quotidian things (one letter to Mayan, he thought, was about tea). All of them signed, "In Valen's name, Delenn." The hairbrush had been in her washroom. Lennier should have looked there first.

Lennier sat down beside her on the bed, gathered up a handful of silky hair (and he knew that this should feel strange, alien to him, it did not. He had pledged his life to her. She was his home), began gently working the brush through the strands. This was one office Lennier could do for her that the healers could not (would not). Delenn closed her eyes, sighed gently. Before the Temple of Varenni, before the Starfire Wheel, Delenn had done this for herself, though once she had confided to Lennier (with some embarrassment) that she'd had to ask Susan Ivanova (Babylon 5's first officer and a close friend) to teach her. The indignities of human hair were not something covered in Valen's prophecies (Jeffrey Sinclair's memories, and of course they would not have been; Sinclair was male, and Delenn would never have told him the story).

Finally she spoke (usually she thanked him; tonight that was not what was on her mind). "How does Mayan?"

Lennier almost dropped the brush; he was sure Delenn could feel him freeze suddenly like a cornered, terrified animal. "How --?"

Her laugh was soft, at once sad and bitter. "I am ill, Lennier, not dead, and not oblivious. I still hear things. How does my oldest friend, my _id'sal'ier_?"

Lennier felt his heart twist at hearing Delenn call that hard, bitter woman, the one who had called Delenn _zha'Valen_, _soul-sister_.

He went still then, breathing slowly, wondering what he should tell her (wondering what was not the truth, and yet not a lie) and it was not so much that Minbari did not lie, that it was one of the teachings of Valen (Lennier, after all, had long ago ceased to believe in Valen's words, in Valen's truth), but that he had sworn his service to Delenn, and more than that his love, and lying to her was (in her mind) both blasphemy and the greatest disrespect he could show her. But neither could Lennier speak the truth.

(Mayan, her _id'sal'ier_, Delenn's beloved Mayan, gentle singer of _tee'la_, had killed two men, had called Delenn _zha'Valen_. The pain of the truth might kill Delenn. Lennier could not tell her).

"She is well," he said softly (in body, if not in mind, and he could not forget the stinging in his palm as it connected with Mayan's cheek, nor the hurt and the dark fury (outrage) in Mayan's eyes as she looked up at him from where she lay in the grass. "I have seen her. She is with the priests in the temple in Yedor. She has been there since before the fighting ended." Regretfully, he put aside the brush, stood up again (Lennier had come to love the weight of Delenn's hair in his hand).

(Lennier knew Turval had not yet returned from Yedor, knew the healers had not wanted Delenn troubled with disturbing news of any stripe; it was possible she would be content with these small truths. He had not lied to her.)

"Mayan is well," Delenn repeated his words, her voice dark with an emotion he could not quite identify. "Mayan, who will not come to me because she killed two men, is well." It would have been easier if the gaze she turned on Lennier was hard, angry, but it was merely sad (sad and full of regrets).

"I --" Lennier stammered, his voice cracking, failing. What could he say to her, to his Delenn? She knew (knew the horrible truth, or at least part of it; if he were lucky, Delenn would not yet have heard that her gentle, beloved Mayan hated her). He wondered who had brought the news, what that person had told her.

"You thought to protect me," Delenn said softly, and for a moment her face looked old and lined and drawn (and Delenn was far too young yet to bear these marks of age; she had decades, an entire human lifetime, yet before she would go to the Sea of Stars, beyond the Rim). "It is a noble impulse, my dear Lennier, my _shai'hat_." (My aide, she called him, not _Atha'ven_, but not the humiliating name of _shai'mir_, not the word that Mayan had flung in his face).

A noble impulse, but (so Delenn's voice said, so her words told him) ultimately futile. She knew, and it didn't matter who had told her; it seemed so unfair that she had suffered in the Starfire wheel, only to be made suffer (again) by the actions (by the choices) of the woman she had once considered a sister. He wondered who had told her (if it had been her visitor, the one with whom she had lit the blue candles), and felt -- unaccountably -- a sudden stab of fear.

"I knew," he said softly (truthfully), "how much it would hurt you. I thought perhaps the news could wait until you were better, until you were stronger."

Delenn's frown deepened, but it was sorrow, grief, disappointment, not fury. She had looked so when the Markab had shut themselves away, thinking themselves shamed, refusing help (the Markab had died, all of them, down to the last child; all that remained were images, art, literature, empty houses on a dozen worlds). "It was, it appears, self-defense. Two Warriors -- and I am told they had been discipline problems during the war with the humans, during a recent campaign -- entered her home, attacked her; she acted to save herself."

(Mayan had acted as if she were a murderer). Lennier had no reply; he looked back at Delenn, trapped in her even gaze (and it would be easier, he thought, if she were angry). He wanted to look away, wished he could, but the time when he could look down was long past.

"It was self-defense," Delenn said, and her voice nearly broke, "but she killed with her own hands, and you know she still believes, that she has always followed the teachings of Valen. Can you imagine, Lennier, the guilt she must carry, the pain? Had I known -- had you but told me, Lennier" she amended, "I would have sent _to_ her, not _for_ her." And there was a weight of pain, a weight of regret in Delenn's voice (and is this what had come of trying to spare her?).

"I am sorry, Delenn." Simple truth. Lennier bowed his head. (Did she know about the encounter in the garden? He prayed -- though he did not know to what, or to whom -- that she did not.)

"She must think that I do not care about her, that I worry only about our world, forsaking my _id'sali'er_, or that I hate her for what she has done." Delenn's face, in the dim light, looked careworn, old.

(Mayan hates you, Delenn, Lennier thought, for what she thinks you have done to our world. He would never tell her). "She is angry," Lennier said, "and sad."

"And I cannot blame her," Delenn replied. "You have known since you became my _Atha'ven_, have you not?" At Lennier's nod (and he remembered the Ranger who returned to him, saying that Mayan had called Delenn _zha'Valen_ and refused to come, and the young man had been white-faced and horrified), Delenn sighed. "You are young, Lennier, and you have much to learn. You think to protect me, but the truth is always best."

He followed her gaze to the teacups, to the blue candles (some of the Warriors who had come had asked to speak the prayers of forgiveness with her. Normally they came to Lennier first, but he had spent the day in Yedor. With a stab of terror, he suddenly realized who Delenn's visitor must have been (of course he would not have been gainsaid; he simply would have waited until Lennier was called away), realized why this somber mood had fallen over her.

"I acted in anger, Delenn," he said, and that much was true (Lennier's actions had been correct; Shakiri had no right to ask for forgiveness, but Delenn would not see it that way). Delenn, judging from the teacups, from the blue candles, from the sorrow in her eyes, _did not_ see it that way.

"Yes," Delenn said, and this time there was real reproof in her voice. "It is not the way of our people to decide who is, and who is not worthy of the path to repentance, to forgiveness. You have known that since childhood, Lennier."

"You almost died because of _Shai alyt_ Shakiri," he protested, and it was the first time Lennier had spoken, even obliquely, of that night in the Temple of Varenni; he had feared to give it shape with his voice, to make it real, to tempt that death so narrowly avoided to seek Delenn (and this last, he knew was superstitious but the fear coiled in his midsection whenever he had a breath, a moment of quiet).

"It was my choice to enter the Wheel," she corrected, and her voice was soft, filled with infinite sadness but not with regret (never with regret). "Mine and mine alone." Delenn drew a shaking breath. She was tiring; they had talked far too long already, and Lennier should leave, but she spoke again. "Shakiri grieves for Neroon, who was to be Warleader after him. He grieves for all of our people, for our world."

"He grieves!" He laughed, then, short, sharp, bitter (would that he could have remained a boy forever, the naive Lennier who had come to Delenn's side three years ago; would that he had never had to see the world with a man's eyes). "He grieves when it was his choice that set fire to this world, when he almost killed you, when he _did_ kill Neroon." (Lennier had been justified in sending Shakiri away. The old man had acted dishonorably, out of cowardice and power-lust and his actions had almost razed their world and its shining cities to the ground).

"He forced nothing on me, and nothing upon Neroon, Lennier; even if you understand nothing else, I beg that you understand this." She pushed herself away from the supporting pillows, pushed herself nearly upright (and she should not; guilt twisted through him that his actions, his words -- right or no -- should lead Delenn to jeopardize her healing). "Neroon made a choice. His own choice. In so doing, he made our people whole again, and showed Shakiri the error of his ways, of his thoughts, showed him the error of his selfishness. Shakiri regrets what he has done. He seeks a way to make amends."

"What did you tell him?" Lennier asked (he asked, quietly, diffidently, did not demand; he hoped none of his anger bled through into his voice).

Delenn lay back again and sighed. "I told him to go to the temple in Yedor." She closed her eyes (how thin her face still was, how pale, and how dare Shakiri have come to her when she was still so weak?).

Lennier did not understand. He waited a few moments, studying her face (it was still; she did not open her eyes again) before he turned and walked quietly toward the door.

Behind him, Delenn spoke, and Lennier was never sure whether she spoke to herself or whether the words were meant for his ears as well; her voice was pitched so low that it almost faded into the tiny background noises of the temple at night (bells, distant voices, chanting, the soft sighing of the wind). "Perhaps in Yedor, Mayan and Shakiri might heal one another."

(Lennier had done right; he knew he had done right; he was only protecting Delenn, fulfilling the secret vows he had made to her).

As usual, the healer glared at Lennier as Lennier left Delenn's room. Lennier gave a one-shouldered shrug (Delenn did as she would).

##

  
_VI. Dry Bones Can Harm No One_

Since Delenn had survived her encounter with Starfire (and they were already calling her Blessed Delenn, Delenn the Wise, calling her one of the saviors of Minbar, saying that she had changed the heart of a Warrior and ended the destruction, saying that Valen had protected her; how quickly they forgot that it was Delenn who had broken the Grey Council, Delenn whose choice had ignited the war), the stream of pilgrims to the temple in Yedor had flowed on with neither beginning nor end (white robes, black armor, the colorful clothes of the Workers; they mingled like bright spring petals on water, swirling). The temple had been dedicated by Valen. It had survived the burning. It was thus doubly sacred.

(It did not matter to the pilgrims had that Valen had forsaken them, that he had broken his word, that his little ones had come to harm).

They came to mourn lost ones, to leave offerings of thanksgiving for those who had been spared, to pray for healing. Some, Mayan thought, came just so they would not be alone in the ruins and the ashes and the darkness.

The sanctuary was awash with the wavering light of thousands upon thousands of candles, with the fragrance of incense, with the gentle chiming of bell drums, with the murmur of chanting in all the languages of Minbar. As a girl (a young priestess, an innocent, a poet; when words and rituals had still spoken to her with the Voice of the universe), Mayan might have found this gathering of the castes in soft firelight beautiful. Hopeful. But the burning and what came after cursed her with new eyes and now in their cold vision this endless (infinite) pilgrimage seemed merely futile, empty. Mere habit without meaning, no different from the flight of an insect.

(The pilgrims would take strength from this meaningless act, would heal. Mayan would not. Could not.)

Still Mayan stood on the threshold with her basket of candles, hooded, anonymous (another priestess, and she was glad of the camouflage; already there were those asking what _Shaal_ Mayan would write of the great burning. They did not yet know that _Shaal_ Mayan had put aside her voice, that she would never sing again), giving candles into waiting hands and ritual blessings into waiting ears (Isil jen'ri, we gather for the future, when the words she really wanted to speak were Ra'ash ta'al Quish! A plague of misfortune is upon us).

(Mayan no longer had faith to guide her, to make this bearable, but duty bound her nonetheless).

Mayan would never know what drew her eyes to him, out of all of the men and women borne in on the endless tide of prayer and false hope and loneliness. He was unremarkable, neither tall nor short, stooped, dressed in Warrior black and cloaked, hooded as were many of the Warriors that came here, as if they were afraid to show their faces in this most holy (if one believed in holiness any longer) place, and some of the priests felt they should be. Turval said that in the madness that had engulfed their cities, they had all sinned; some in large ways, some in small. (Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Humans were -- had always been -- violent, unpredictable, _dangerous_. Sometimes they also spoke wisdom). The man was one warrior among many (so many), yet somehow -- different.

Mayan could not help herself (and she could imagine what her priest-teachers would have said even when she was a novice; as a woman grown, as _Shaal_ even if she had put aside the honorific, put aside her voice and her words and the music, she should be ashamed of herself). No matter (why should she have any shame left?) Mayan stole a glance (a quick glance, a peek, a moment's lapse born of simple curiosity) under his hood when she held out the candle, offered her blessing (and her voice was rough with hours of repeating words that felt like lies on her lips; she had already broken Valen's greatest commandment, what was one more small blasphemy next to the lives she had taken?)

Under the hood, the cloak that offered safe, comforting anonymity (the cloak that kept his secrets, as it were, from the world), it was Shakiri, Shakiri who had preached strength, courage (a Warrior does not fear death), who along with Delenn had ignited the fire (real and spiritual) that engulfed their world, and who, after all his words, after his actions, after the deaths he ordered (whenever two or more of you are gathered together in my name) had been afraid to face the Starfire, unwilling to give himself in another's place.

(Shakiri had preached letting go of self, letting go of the world, accepting death, and in the end had proven to be selfish, unwilling, _a liar_).

Mayan would never forget his face. Shakiri looked old at the Temple of Varenni, holding his bluster, his words of false bravery like a shield between himself and the death that awaited him, its hot breath upon his neck (he had begged Delenn to walk out of the fire with him), and in the end it had been Neroon who had proven both his strength and Shakiri's cowardice. Now Shakiri (and he was still leader of the Warriors, but he had not shown his face publicly since his humiliation at Delenn's hands; it was Mazetch of the Star Riders, Neroon's brother-in-blood, who led now in all but name) seemed broken, hollow, without substance, like an insect shell blown on the wind in the first icy days of winter. The blood of hundreds of priests, of holy men and women and elders and children, and the blood of his own people, who died following his command, stained his hands. What was he doing here, in this sacred place?

Had he come here, like a Warrior of the past (Star Riders, Wind Swords, Fire Wings, Moon Shields, Night Walkers, and in the dark before the coming of Valen, the clans had fought one another in a war without end and the priests had prayed hopelessly to the gods of the earth for an end to the burning, either in light or in death) to look upon the face of the victor? But no, in those days (so the histories said, though Mayan knew history could be rewritten, knew that truth could wear many faces, many guises without becoming a lie, without metamorphosing into falsehood and blasphemy) to look upon the face of the victor? But no, those Warriors had gone bare-faced (and though they had blunted the points of their bonecrests in shame and submission) unafraid, unbowed, and they had done their new masters honor (_Defa eh'rust_, they would have said, _I yield to your authority_, at least until the next war, months or weeks or days away). Shakiri hid his face, his seeming under a heavy cloak. (He came here as a coward).

Did he come here to seek forgiveness? (Her people called it _athan'la mir na'fak_, the prayers of rebirth. The humans called it penance). If that was what Shakiri thought (if he still believed what Mayan could not, if the old Warrior ever had faith in anything other than the inevitability of death), it was wrong of him to come here with his face hidden; a falsehood. Those wishing _na'fak_ should come naked before Valen, carrying no burdens. One could not seek to emerge into the light if one clung desperately to the shadows.

(Shakiri was a man without honor. Of course he would come here hooded. How dare he come here at all?)

Perhaps the truth was simpler. Perhaps Shakiri, like Mayan, was he merely lost and wandering. Forty years, as the humans said, in the desert. The tales told by their faiths were occasionally beautiful).

Her glance under his hood was supposed to be momentary, ephemeral. Enough to see without being seen, enough, perhaps, to perceive (perception was greater than sight, and perhaps she might understand a bit of why the old Warrior stood now in the holy sanctuary of Valen's house). Mayan did not expect Shakiri's eyes to catch hers and hold. Did not expect the sudden flash of _kinship_, of understanding, that flowed from his gaze into hers, that flowed _between them_, between a voiceless poet and an honorless warrior (such a pair they made).

(Mayan had killed. Shakiri had lived. Both had transgressed against Valen).

Perhaps it was the haunted darkness that swam behind Shakiri's eyes, swirling within like the waiting cyclone, but Mayan could not help but remember another warrior, come hooded and stumbling and broken from another war (a different war, the war against the humans and the Warriors and the Grey Council called it a holy war -- names had, and will always have power over the mind and the soul -- but it was really just another name for massacre and the Minbari, _Valen's people_ nearly ended another race). Mayan had been just an acolyte, barely old enough to serve (flushed with honor at her small tasks: trimming candle wicks, ringing the tiny bells at sunrise and sunset) but she remembered him (remembered most of all his eyes, and the weight of guilt and pain within them). The warrior's name was Durhan. He wanted the priests' blessing to go beyond the Rim (he was too young by decades but sometimes the priests could hear a soul's calling and allowed it), wanted their blessing to give himself to the stars (light and peace and a forgetting). Mayan remembered bathing his feet, speaking those prayers for the first time, and Durhan wanted (so badly) to die, but he was kind to a small priestess.

The words that tumbled from Mayan's lips did so without her conscious volition (they came from somewhere deep within, like the first words of _tee'la_, like the still small voice of which the humans spoke). "I would make _Cha'dum drala'id_ with you, Shakiri." The ceremony of the end of soul's darkness was old, older than the stones, older than Valen. It was, some said, as old as killing, as old as death. As old as the desperate longing of the living for the forgiveness of the dead.

With _Cha'dum drala'id_ had a priest named Turval saved the life of Durhan; with _Cha'dum drala'id_ had Durhan been drawn back into the light (and he was now _Sech_ Durhan, who taught and guarded the Anla'shok).

Recognition flashed in Shakiri's eyes. Who Mayan was, _what_ she was (and she never expected to find this strange sort of fraternity in blasphemy). "_Vi'is_" Shakiri murmured (in Adronato, in her tongue, not in the harsh Lenn'ah of the warriors), and Mayan could hardly hear him. _Yes_.

_VII. Come In Under the Shadow of this Red Rock_

In the Time Before, Minbari temples were all like the Temple of Varenni, hollowed out of stone, and her ancestors had done honor to the stillness of rock and the strange dark powers that moved beneath. Valen (Minbari not born of Minbari, and his name meant 'he who is timeless,' but in the his own time, they also called him _Ardria_, he who creates light) had changed that, drawing the priests out into sunlight, starlight, moonlight, candlelight, and shunning darkness, and only two ceremonies (the oldest , most sacred, most dangerous) of the Religious Caste now remained that were conducted in darkness. One was the Dreaming, and few ever walked in those mists. The other was _Cha'dum drala'id_, undertaken only in the greatest of extremity. Those who entered it stripped themselves (stripped their spirits) bare, not before Valen, but before themselves, before each other, before the universe. They sought the deepest truths (the secret truths) of their souls. The ceremony saved Durhan, was said to have saved Branmer who had been both _Mir'aal_ and the greatest of warleaders, but not all who left the chamber of _Cha'dum drala'id_ it chose to live, after.

When a priest was one of the two seeking the ceremony, he (or she, though Mayan knew from her studies, knew from the time when she still believed, that it was rare for a woman to seek _Cha'dum drala'id_) might ask to be both officiant and supplicant, to enter without another to serve as intermediary between himself (herself) and the harsh actinic glare of truth. Clarenn, who was high priestess in this place (and the woman was tall and homely and her bonecrest marred by an ugly flaw, but her eyes were dark and liquid and lovely; Mayan had not known her before, but she seemed kind and Turval said she was wise) had tried to dissuade her from this course, had offered to find Mayan any officiant she wished, but Mayan had stood firm.

"It is my prerogative," Mayan had insisted.

"It is your right as _Mir'aala_," Clarenn had agreed, worry flickering in her eyes (and Mayan would never understand why the priesthood had not stripped her of the sacraments when the Anla'shok brought her here with blood -- so much blood -- on her hands). "But, my dear Mayan, there is a difference between prerogative and wisdom."

"No other should be burdened with what is in our souls, mine and Shakiri's." Death. Blasphemy. Hatred. Unbelief. Mayan's voice was even. "Do I have your blessing, _Va'sala?_" (Mayan imagined once that someday priests and acolytes would bow their heads before Delenn and call her _Va'sala_, holy mother. She had never imagined that Delenn would rend the world with her own hands).

"I will bathe your feet with my own hands before you enter the chamber, daughter," Clarenn had said gently and there was no judgement in her eyes or in her voice.

As girls (barely come to their acolytes' robes, away from their families for the first time and aching with carefully-hidden loneliness because it would not do to be overheard sobbing in the Hall of Maidens), Delenn and Mayan had slipped out in the darkness of many a midnight to explore all the places (secret and prohibited and therefore exciting) forbidden to the novices. The bell tower that _Mir'aal_ Avaier said was too high, too dangerous for little girls and little boys to ascend (but at night, if Delenn and Mayaan climbed to the top -- carefully, so carefully, because the wind would grab at clothes and arms like something greedy, wanting, threatening to drag them back down into the darkness -- they could sit, huddled against one another for warmth, with the twinkling lights of Yedor spread out across the valley beneath them like tiny stars caught in a cup). The tiny chamber where _Va'sala_ Firell, who watched over the temple in Valen's name, robed herself before the sunrise service (and the old priestess's robes smelled of time and incense and herbs, and the heavy silky fabric caught on small, work-roughened hands, and they had imagined wrapping themselves in these vestments someday in the far-distant future, and ascending the three stone steps at the front of the tower to sing the first notes into the expectant silence of waiting dawn). Once, they had hidden in the shadows of the close-planted trees in the inner courtyard when the Sisters of Valeria, whose peregrinations had brought them to Yedor, assembled beneath the stars to chant the secret prayers (Delenn had hoped to catch a glimpse of her mother, gone to the service of Valen when Delenn was barely more than a baby, and Delenn had been disappointed but the harmonies the Sisters wove brought tears to Mayan's eyes).

But they had never passed this door, its wood darkened with centuries, this door that led down into darkness, into the stone. Minbari buildings soared up, touching the sky, touching the air. They did not reach down into the depths and the weight and the darkness. Once, Mayan asked one of her teachers what was beyond that door, and all _Mir'aal_ Rathenn had said (and his eyes were heavy and his face was seamed; he had grown old in the service of Valen) was, "Only what you bring with you," and Mayan had not understood.

The other acolytes (the young ones) said that it was where the demons lived (the ones they were not supposed to believe in; demons were merely superstitions, the fevered imaginings of the fearful mind fighting stillness), said they would eat a child's soul if someone unwary dared to pass that age-blackened door.

Delenn wanted to explore here, too (believing, even then, that the darkness could not touch her, believing the promise that -- she said -- Valen had given her. _I will not let my little ones come to harm, not here in my great house_). Fearful, Mayan had refused, begged Delenn not to find out what was beyond that door, beneath the stone. Delenn, who loved her sweet Mayan even then, had wrapped her arms around Mayan, who was trembling, and kissed her on the forehead, and then they had left this place. If Delenn had ever come back here, ever dared the demons in the stone beneath, Mayan had never heard about it.

When she was a little older, Mayan stood with a throng of other dark-robed priestesses in the first tentative rays of dawn, shivering in the cold wind of early spring, and watched a priest named Turval lead a warrior named Durhan up out of the darkness of the heart of the world to blink in the sunlight, and there had been tears wet on the warrior's cheeks and he had spoken the words of life (not the words of death, which were his right following _Cha'dum drala'id_) and Turval had embraced him and the priestesses had sang the songs of rebirth while the sun rose.

Mayan had tried then to tell herself that she was too old for such silliness, but she had wondered (as the chants poured fourth from her lips and her throat) whether Turval had left his demons down in the darkness, wondered how many demons had been left there by others seeking the end of soul's darkness, hungry and waiting.

Now Mayan stood in front of that same door down into the womb of the world (she touched the door, tentatively, and the wood was cool and smooth and it felt strangely ordinary), a warrior bent with defeat and the self-inflicted wounds of pride beside her, breathing deeply, his face lined. She did not feel like a priestess, did not feel strong enough to hold back what lay beneath the world, waiting for them. Shakiri did not look like a warrior. Stripped of who they had once been, they would descend those steps together.

(Ancient humans, from a culture so old their world had nearly forgotten it, once wrote, Naked and bowed low, Inanna enters the throne room.)

Murmuring words so old their meaning had been lost to time, only the nonsense syllables preserved, Clarenn bathed their feet in icy water from the Oldest Spring, then threw open the door, and the air smelled of dust and damp and darkness and age, and Mayan shivered. Their destiny (their choice, to live or to die, to heal or to rot) lay below with the demons.

Shakiri took Mayan's hand, surprising her (his palm was dry and warm, the hand of a younger man, and his grasp was surprisingly strong) and with Clarenn's blessings at their backs, they went down into darkness.

(Only what you bring with you, Rathenn had said).

Mayan was not sure what she had been expecting to find in the little chamber (hallowed) hollowed into the stone beneath the temple (howling, tormented demons perhaps, the darkness in the souls of those who had come here before her, given shape and form, or perhaps some servant of the spirits of the earth, waiting to remove beads of lapis, golden rings, royal robes. In the human legend, the spirits had said, "Quiet, Inanna, the ways of the underworld are perfect.")

All that waited for them below was a tiny room, rough-hewn from the stone (and it it had been there since the days before the coming of Valen; Yedor had been a small settlement then, and this the holy of holies, where the _Av'Mir'aala_, the senior high priestess, came on the highest holy days to make offerings for peace and prosperity (futile; the wars then went on without end, the only difference being who died in the Starfire wheel to end them), to offer prayers to the jealous spirits of the earth). The chamber's walls sparkled with flecks of quartz in the light of the single candle (too small to last the night; at some point they would be cast into darkness). There were two cushions covered in undyed cloth, a basin of water, and on the tiny altar (barely more than a smooth stone in the center of the chamber) a goblet (plain fired clay, clear-glazed; nothing in this ceremony bore ornamentation, not even the robes they wore). The goblet, Mayan knew, was filled with _Sha'neyat_, that which was called Death-Destroyer, and which (Clarenn said, when she instructed them, and whispered Valen's secret words to them) would reveal the truth hidden in the darkness; they were to drink of it when the candle guttered and true dark fell.

Only Clarenn had been here before them; besides the supplicants, those who sought the judgement of the spirts of the earth, only the Temple Mother was allowed in this place. It was quiet. There were no spirits screaming, only the heaviness of still air and the damp coolness of old stone. Mayan sank down on a cushion and breathed deeply, settling (the reflex of a priestess, bone deep even when the priestess believed nothing). Shakiri sank down on the other cushion, across from her, and his face was open, stripped of the arrogant dignity that had cloaked him when she had seen his face broadcast across their world during the war (during the burning). His eyes were dark and steady when they met hers, and she realized that what she saw in them was not defeat, but regret and infinite sorrow.

(Mayan had hated him, Shakiri the coward who had brought a rain of fire to their world and then turned away from his duty. But it was hard to hate a sad old man, who had once been terribly frightened.)

Avoiding his gaze, Mayan drew breath to speak the ritual words that would begin the _Cha'dum drala'id_, of which the ceremony called _Mora'dum_, the application of terror, was a little sibling. Before the ceremony began, they could walk away, they could choose not to face what waited in their souls (they could choose not to face _Sha'neyat_ and the stalking darkness). But a priestess waited above them, listening (in the silence, words would carry). Once the words had been spoken, there would be no turning back.

Mayan bathed her hands in the basin, scooped up some of the icy water between her hands (and the surface of the water was like a dark mirror, reflecting the surface of the stone, the dimness that surrounded them with only the flame of a tiny candle to hold back the gathering dark), and poured the water over Shakiri's outstretched palms.

The words that she spoke were as old as memory, maybe as old as the world, and they had never been spoken aboveground, never in the starlight, and only the ears of the stones and the priestesses who listened at the door to the underworld had ever heard them. "Change my hands into the hands of the serpent," she said. ("Change my hands into the hands of the serpent," Shakiri repeated, and it was odd to hear him speaking Adronato. His voice was deep and resonant). "Change my feet into the feet of the serpent," she said ("Change my feet into the feet of the serpent," Shakiri repeated). "Let me meet my darkness and free myself. Do not let it hold me."

Above them (above them in the light), Mayan could hear the waiting priestess close the door (it was a heavy thump) and bar it.

"What do we do now?" Shakiri asked, and she had never expected to hear this warrior, this powerful orator whose words had summoned fire and death to their world, uncertain.

"We wait," Mayan said mercilessly. "For darkness."

"That is it?" Shakiri wondered (he sounded startled). Of course he would not understand. Warriors (Mayan knew; her father had been of that caste, and he had carried her on his shoulders on some of their ceremonial days) had different ceremonies, full of words and flame and motion, symbols and display, the rituals of men and women who did not understand the gentle power of stillness. Of all the Warriors, only their swordmasters and the _F'hursna_, the masters of the fighting pike called _denn'bok_ understood the strength of the still mind in the way the priests did, and Shakiri was neither.

(That does not mean he is less, whispered a small voice deep in her soul. She wanted to ignore it, but it rang like clear glass.)

"You may meditate if you wish," Mayan said, more gently (and how she had hated him, feared him while the cities burned; then he had seemed larger than life, a force like the great blizzards that swept down from the poles in the depths of winter, burying all in their path, but here, in this tiny room under the earth, this tiny space hollowed out of stone and surrounded by waiting darkness, he was merely an old man, his skin rough, and his face careworn and lined). "Or ... we can talk. About ... this. Why we are here." She held her hands out, palms up, feeling the words slip through her fingers (a feeling she was not used to; words, before that night, and two warriors, and a pool of blood, had always answered her call, now they slid away from her touch).

Shakiri cocked his head to one side, studied her with his lips pursed. "This is an odd ceremony, _Shaal Mayan_. I had thought it would be more -- more --" His voice had been so angry, so strident when he had rallied the Warriors to his banner, rallied them to the breaking of Minbar. Now it was gentle, uncertain. He sounded like Mayan's grandfather.

"I know," Mayan told him, and she did not quite understand the smile that touched her lips. "My mother was a priestess, but my father was of the Night Walkers. When I was a girl, he took me to see a new ship launched." She remembered it, the drumming and the chanting and the staves banging against the ground and the polished armor and the pomp, and she had been as overcome with awe in that gallery of black-clad of men and women overlooking the space docks and the great ship, purples and blues and vast sweeping curves like a sea creature, shining against the blackness of space, as she had been in Valen's temple (not less. Only different.) "My caste teaches that the truest devotions come from within. This has been true since the days before Valen. In the deepest ceremonies, and the oldest there are -- few words."

"The _F'hursna_ speak of the power of no-mind, the power of letting go of the inner voice and seeing with true eyes," Shakiri murmured, almost to himself. "In the ceremonies of my caste, they act as high priests." And she could hear it in his voice, unspoken, the surprised thought that perhaps they were not so different after all.

Silence stretched between them for awhile. The candle burned lower (it was small; its light would fade quickly).

In the days before Valen, there had been no castes, no warriors, no workers, no religious caste, only clans, and those who fought for the clans, and the clan priests who tended the sacred things, and those in the clan who built and created. Then, there had been the inner ceremonies (the silences of the priests, in the center of the world, the offering of truths and deep secrets) and the outer ceremonies, with the pageantry and the drumming and the fire and the songs, and when Valen had not unified Minbar but split it along different lines, seeking to erase clan boundaries and end the fighting (and why had Mayan never seen that before?), he had given the inner ceremonies to the religious caste (which he had called _Min'aia Vale'mir_) and the outer ceremonies to the warrior (_Min'aia Denn'shok_). "Once," Mayan told him, "all the castes were one, and all our ceremonies one. We are the _Kaf'min'drala_, the other halves of one another's souls."

(She had expected to feel nothing but hate when she went down into the stone with Shakiri. Mayan had not expected this gentle sadness.)

Shakiri was silent for a few breaths, watching the candle (the one tiny candle that was all that stood between them and darkness, between them and _Sha'neyat_ and the memories it would bring) his face clouded with the closed look of deep thought, the lines of regret around his mouth deepening. "_Kaf'min'drala_," Shakiri repeated finally. "That is what Branmer called the humans when he asked the Warriors to agree to the surrender at the end of the holy war. We did not understand the humans, nor they us. We declared war on them because of a mistake. We did not understand the Religious Caste, and almost destroyed our world because we thought you weak. Is it our fate," he wondered, "to seek to destroy the other half of ourselves?

"It is normal to fear what we do not understand," Mayan said, and the words welled up gently (and she was instructing this man who she should hate, instructing him as quietly, as gently as she had taught the novices that sat at her feet, as she had taught Lennier, her little _Aha'es_ and she did not quite understand why). "And fear, Valen taught, leads to hate."

Mayan was startled to hear the words of Valen on her own lips, the same lips that had turned the prayers into lies spoken in an eternity of disbelief, but did it matter whether she thought he was touched with holy fire or simply a speaker of truth? Valen had been a man -- the records showed him, living, breathing, and he had spoken strong words that resounded across a thousand years, and once Delenn (lovely Delenn, who had broken the staff of the Grey Council and with it, their very world) had told her that all living beings were star-stuff, that the same atoms that shaped Mayan's cells, Delenn's cells had existed since the flash of light when the universe began (_matter can neither be created nor destroyed_), had once been shaped and changed in the center of a star, that each of them was a bit of the universe made manifest, a bit of the fire of creation. That the creative force, the holy of holies, burned in each of them. In the humans. In the Minbari. In Mayan (and burned still, though she had killed, because she yet lived). In Shakiri (destroyer of worlds, frightened old man).

In Delenn. "Once, I thought Delenn was the other half of my soul," Mayan breathed, the words springing to her lips involuntarily ("Only what you bring with you," Rathenn had said).

(Demons. Death. Hatred. The candle burned lower).

"You hate her now." Shakiri's voice in the dimness was rough, and his face and bonecrest were all long shadows and negative space (it is the darkness around us that gives us shape). The flame of the single candle flickered, and Mayan knew it would not be long until the candle was consumed and the flame died away into embers and then into lifeless ash and they would be left in darkness until the priestesses in dark robes unbarred the doors at sunrise. How long had they been here (time outside of time, in this place which is not a place)? How long would the darkness have them until it was forced (by the priestesses, by Valen's holy people) to relinquish them? This was not a ceremony of Valen (not a ceremony of light and breath). _Cha'dum drala'id_ belonged to the spirits of the earth, and suddenly Mayan was afraid.

"You hate her," and Shakiri spoke again, repeating himself, demanding an answer. "Delenn." (And in his voice Mayan could hear the Warrior he once was, one of the handful of men, Branmer chose to stand at his side throughout the holy war).

"Why should I not?" Mayan demanded (in the buffeting of her breath, the candle flame guttered violently and she stilled, panic thrilling along her nerves at the threat of sudden darkness). "I trusted her. I believed in her. Our _people_ believed in her. But she broke the Grey Council, plunged our world into war. So many died because of her. Delenn of the family Mir should be _zha'Valen_ to all of us."

"No," Shakiri said softly, and Mayan stiffened in shock. "Perhaps, when Delenn broke the staff and fulfilled Valen's prophecy, she created an opportunity for this madness, but she did not cause it, _Shaal_ Mayan."

Mayan made a small sound of disbelief deep in her throat (almost a laugh, almost a sob, and she missed the girl, the lovely girl, with whom she had once shared all her secrets). "What does it matter? Without her actions, we never would have had this war."

"This was never what Delenn wanted. Never what she intended. Had it not been for my actions, _my_ choice, we might have gone on in peace after the Shadow War," Shakiri corrected. He had sounded weak, frightened, at the Temple of Varenni. Now he sounded merely sad. "I told myself I was doing what was needful, that our people had been dwindling for centuries and bold action was necessary. I believed it. But Delenn showed me at the Wheel that this was a lie. That I merely wanted power."

Mayan was silent then, breathing, watching the flame that was slowly dimming to nothing, drowning slowly in the fuel which had, earlier, sustained it.

Shakiri continued. His voice was quiet, but it did not waver. "Had I wanted change, truly wanted it, had I really driven priests and children out into the snow," and here his voice choked, and she never thought she would hear this man speak with anything resembling regret coloring his voice, "for the sake of our people, I would have walked willingly into the fire, as did Delenn. As did Neroon. But Delenn showed me the truth. I am merely a desperate, power-crazed old man." He was not done. "Tell me, _Shaal Mayan_, what did you feel on the night that you killed Shaka and Vashaer?" (She had never known their names; knowing them now brought a stab of pain).

Mayan wanted (with a desperation born of terror) to protest that she did not remember (and it would not be quite a lie; her recollection of that night was like mist, ripples on a pond; flickering, ephemeral). the words fell from her lips anyway. "Pain. Fear. I did not want them to hurt me. In the end, I did not want to die." (And then she had killed them. Shaka. Vashaer. They had names).

"So you fought for your life." Shakiri's voice was almost gentle, velvet over steel, and Mayan was glad the shadows hid her surprise. "As did the Religious Caste, when we Warriors began to kill your people in the quest for power."

The flame guttered once more, brightening for an instant, and then they were plunged into darkness.

Mayan's heart pounded suddenly. She did not know what she was expecting. The screams of the demons she had feared since childhood? Earth spirits reaching out of the stony darkness to consume her, to consume them? There was nothing, only silence pressing down on them from all sides, and they were lost in a vast blackness without end.

(Ritual brought sanity. So she had learned in her years in the temple).

Blindly Mayan reached for the goblet of _Sha'neyat_, finding it, with a shock of relief, where she had expected to. Her hands closed on the cool smoothness of glazed clay and she lifted the cup, spoke the ritual words.

"_Zhalen minah'wynd_." We are alone with our truths. Like the rest of the ritual it was simple, stark words (stark actions) set alone against the darkness.

_Sha'neyat_ stripped away the outer monologue, the fear, the resistance, unveiled the inner eye. All that they had hidden, even from themselves, would be revealed. Mayan's mouth was dry. She could not see Shakiri's face in the darkness, but they had chosen their road when they spoke the ritual words in the light, when they had let the priestess bar the door (when they had gone down through the gates of the underworld, leaving behind strings of lapis and golden rings).

(The humans, she had learned, when she went to Earth to sing -- and oh, it seemed like a lifetime ago, another life -- had a saying: _The only way out is through_).

Mayan brought the cup to her lips, drank deeply (the liquid was bitter and it burned), placed the cup in Shakiri's hand. She could hear him swallow, hear his indrawn hiss at the bitterness or the burning. She heard the scrape of clay on stone as he set the goblet aside.

(Now they were alone).

They were alone here now, with their demons (with what they had brought with them, with truths forgotten and avoided and half-understood), alone in the darkness at the heart of the world.

The world began to swim. In the the close, vast blackness (there was suddenly no forward or back, no up or down), Shakiri (an old warrior, her enemy, her companion, world-destroyer, regretful old man) reached out and took Mayan's hand.

 

_VIII. We Stopped in the Colonnade, and Went on in Sunlight_

Lennier did not want to be here, robed in plain dark gray, barefoot, waiting in the inner courtyard of the temple in Yedor, surrounded by other priests, young and old, faces lined and unlined, waiting in watchful silence for the sun to come over the horizon, watching a barred door that went down into darkness, and the priestess who had kept vigil over that door through the long night (she was young, robed in unadorned, undyed cloth, and vowed to silence, and had given her voice to the service of a Minbari not born of Minbari, had given her voice to Valen, had given her voice -- unknowing; only a handful knew the truth -- to Jeffery Sinclair, who had been only a human man, and Lennier wanted to laugh with the absurdity of it).

He especially did not want to be here in the courtyard of this temple (this false temple, this temple of no one) waiting for Mayan, who had broken Delenn's heart, waiting for _Shakiri_ whose mad quest for power had led Delenn to offer her life in the Starfire Wheel. He owed them nothing but contempt. Delenn owed them nothing (he had tried to tell her that, but she had merely smiled that gentle smile and told him -- her voice was still so weak that it made Lennier's heart twist -- that the universe was not about debts and owing). Delenn could not come here (she had asked, begged, but the healers still would not let Delenn leave her bed), so she insisted Lennier go in her place. As her eyes. As her hands. To welcome Mayan home again, or to bear witness when she spoke the words of death.

"But she would not come to you," Lennier protested. "You sent to her three times, and she would not come," and in those first days, Delenn had been so weak (had been so nearly consumed by starfire) that the healers feared for her, and yet all she could think of, all that concerned her was worry for her oldest friend. (Lennier had not repeated Mayan's spiteful words, when Delenn's messenger brought them. He had not told her that he had struck Mayan in the garden of this temple. He had only said that Mayan refused, turned away Delenn's requests (that was not the act of a friend, a soul-sister).

"If her extremity was so great that she now seeks _Cha'dum drala'id_," Delenn said quietly, her eyes meeting his (and oh, the gentleness in them almost undid Lennier), "I am sure that Mayan had good reason for refusing."

(Lennier had sworn his life to Delenn. He went without further protest).

And so now he stood, uncomfortably, the small stones among the grass blades digging painfully into the soles of his feet (Lennier had not stood barefoot in meditation since the day before he and Delenn had gone to aid the Markab and instead had watched all of them die), waiting. Delenn wanted him to take the last of his vows (to bind himself to the service of the temple through this life and the next) before they went home again. She said it was not truly service to Valen (to Jeffrey Sinclair, and they were both keepers of that secret) but to the universe which Valen had also served. She said names did not matter, only the intentions of the heart.

Lennier did not know what he was going to tell her. He knew he could not speak those words, make those vows, that the words would turn to ash and dust on his lips and in his heart.

For now, Lennier waited in the chill of early morning for Mayan and Shakiri to emerge from the heart of the world. He waited, with the others, in silence. Silence was sacred, stillness was sacred (words distorted truth by limiting it, hemming it round with meaning): this Lennier had been taught since childhood, his life itself hemmed round by rules and strictures, rituals and prayers and the assumption that he would someday give his life to Valen, the assumption that he would someday _want_ to give his life to Valen. (He _had_ wanted to give his life to Valen, until a strange night, and the reappearance of Babylon 4, and the disappearance of Jeffrey Sinclar into the mists of time had revealed that the truth was merely a Vorlon trick, and that Valen had been _human_).

The silence he kept was habit, politeness, no devotion. He stood with _Va'sala_ Clarenn, the Temple Mother, and that venerable lady watched him carefully out of the corners of her eyes. Lennier tried not to notice, eyes on the horizon, waiting for the first signs of sunrise (waiting for an end to this).

He would bear witness (do as Delenn asked) and then he would leave this place, which held nothing for him (Dust. Ashes. Bare stone. Empty prayer).

(The waiting would be easier if he could find a still center and rest there. It eluded him. He thought of Delenn, her face pale, worrying about the future of the world when she should be resting. He thought of the sadness in her voice when she asked after Mayan, who did not deserve her concern or her sympathy, of gentle the sorrow in her eyes when she spoke of Shakiri who did not deserve her forgiveness. But Delenn had sent Shakiri here to be healed).

Eventually (finally, its hour come round at last), the sun began its slow creep over the horizon.

The silent priestess of the threshold (the only one in this silent company robed in pale cloth rather than dark) stood, lifted a basin of clear water over her head (and she was a tiny thing, but strong; she stood firm without trembling, and Lennier remembered there was a time when he could have taken such strength in Valen, might have taken strength in a lie), lifted it in the light of the sun, and _Va'sala_ Clarenn stepped away from her place at Lennier's side (she moved with the same quiet gravity that had always struck him about Delenn, and it made Clarenn almost beautiful), and removed a bundle of sacred herbs from the sash that bound her robe, cast them into the water in the basin.

Clarenn's words were the first sounds to break the silence that had surrounded this place since the door was barred last night.

"_Durah rama, med nai!_" She cried. With the coming of dawn, it is done. The old priestess's face was taut with worry, though her voice was even (few Minbari made the _Cha'dum, drala'id_, maybe two in five cycles, but fully a third of those who went down into the dark below the world chose the road of death after -- the way to rebirth, it was called -- and the law of the religious caste said those who had gone down into darkness may not be gainsaid in this matter). Clarenn took the basin from the young (silent) priestess's hands, poured the water out before the door down into darkness. The water ran in shining rivulets over the stone, splashing against the temple mother's feet, against the little priestess's.

Lennier could feel the indrawn breath (tension, power suspended in this moment in the early stirrings of the day) that ran through the assembled watchers, wished (perhaps for a moment) that he could share it. (Empty rituals. Words without meaning. Two of the lonely and the broken, alone in the dark with a drug that revealed memories. There was no power here.)

In those first strange days after they had learned the secret of Valen (a secret Delenn said they must keep with them even after they went to the Sea of Stars), Delenn had spent hours each evening in the little temple on Babylon 5 (that way station in space, where they floated, the lot of them, all alone in the night), praying, meditating. She always emerged smiling, centered (suggested that Lennier join her, but he said he could not). Eventually Lennier had asked her (eyes downcast, ever the good aide, the loyal servant) what she found there, how she could still believe after what they had seen (in the face of the truth that Babylon 4's return had revealed). Delenn had stroked his cheek (her hand was cool and firm, and she smelled softly of spices) and smiled, and said "We are all star-stuff, Lennier. The voice of the universe can speak through any of us, from the most humble to the most exalted. I serve the voice, not its vessel."

Lennier had tried, for a time, to believe as Delenn did, to feel as Delenn did, but all he could see in the statues in the temple now was the face of an unworthy human. _We may sometimes look like you, but we are not you._

(It did not matter.)

Clarenn unbarred the door, pulled it open (straining a little against the weight of it; Delenn would have whispered in his ear that the past is a weighty thing), let the weak light of dawn stream down into the darkness the Earth held.

(They waited. Five breaths, ten, and the win stirred the grass of the courtyard in ripples. Somewhere in the distance a fountain splashed, a _temshwee_ burst into song).

None spoke. In the silence they could hear the scrape of hesitant footsteps on stone (ascending, ascending, and their holy books said Valen had led them all out of darkness, but Valen had been merely a man) and then _Shaal_ Mayan and _Shai Alyt_ Shakiri (destroyers of hearts, lives, worlds) emerged from below, blinking in the weak sunlight that must seem like starfire to eyes that had spent hours down in darkness, pale, hesitant, leaning on one another. (_I was lost but now am found_ and it was a song that John Sheridan, John Sheridan the human that wished to be Delenn's husband, Starkiller even after he had visited Z'ha'dum and arguably saved the galaxy had once sung, and the words had lingered in Lennier's mind for days after).

Clarenn stood in front of the pair (the brand on Mayan's forehead stood out starkly against her pale skin, and light seemed to shine through Mayan as if she had been stripped down to her essence, made transparent, translucent. Darkness. Silence. Drugs.) "What do you choose?" Clarenn asked, and in her voice was all the majesty (borrowed from a lie) of the temple.

"I will go on in the light. I will go on in life," Mayan said, lifting her chin, and her voice was strong (it was a voice that had carried across crowds on dozens of worlds). "_Isil'zha veni, a'fa'an wynd._ I broke Valen's law, but I have seen within myself now, and know now that it was not an act committed out of selfishness or out of hatred, but out of terror and desperation, and Valen wrote that it is no sin to seek life when confronted with death. I made a grievous mistake, and must yet atone, but I will atone with the service of my hands, with my voice."

Mayan knelt before Clarenn, bowing her head (and the curve of her neck was beautiful; once she and Delenn had been as alike as sisters, before Delenn had become something different, something more). Lennier was cold. His feet hurt. He focused on his breathing, tried to will away the external. (He did not want to be here).

Shakiri (and what right did he have to be here, Shakiri the coward who had almost destroyed the crystal cities in the service of nothing more sacred than power, Shakiri who had urged others to die in his place when he feared to sacrifice his own life?) looked old, even older than he had at the Temple of Varenni, even older than when he had come to Lennier two days after in his futile quest for an audience with Delenn. Shakiri was thin and wasted and his face was lined, and when Mayan stepped away from him to kneel before the temple mother, he staggered. (Not so powerful now, this _Shai alyt_. It would have been better had the ritual killed him. _Sha'neyat_ took the old, sometimes). But the _Shai Alyt_'s (the old man's) voice was surprisingly strong when he spoke the ritual words. "I will go on in the light. I will go on in life. _Isil'zha veni, a'fa'an wynd._."

What Shakiri did next was entirely unexpected. He dropped to his knees before _Va'sala_ Clarenn, hands outstretched, palms up, fingers spread, in the posture of one seeking admittance to the temple as a novice. She looked startled, gazing down at the old man with the vicious spiralling bonecrest of a warrior (so many decades older, Lennier thought, than the children who knelt at her feet at the first thaw of winter and offered the service of their hands and their hearts to Valen and to the temple, came to offer their devotion to nothing at all), but her hand automatically came to rest on the top of his head in the ritual gesture of acknowledgement.

Shakiri's voice when he spoke again, was rough (thick, Lennier thought with tears, and it seemed unfair that the man should receive acknowledgement from the priestess whose people he had ordered killed; the Religious Caste had always been too forgiving). "Too many times have we, as individuals, and as a people fought against _Kaf'min'drala_, the other halves of our soul, because we did not understand. Because we feared. I led us into this darkness because I feared what I thought was the weakness of the Religious Caste, but it was not weakness, I know now, only a different sort of strength. I beg you, _Va'sala_ Clarenn, teach me, accept the service of my hands, that I may learn to understand, and through my understanding help to lead our people back into the light."

_Va'sala_ Clarenn's eyes were wide, but her voice was even (and Lennier could not help but think of how uncountably many across the world offered their service, their faith, to a lie), "This is the path you choose, _mal'ier niall_?" and it seemed strange to hear the priestess call a man who was probably a decade her senior _little brother_, but Lennier's people had always been insistent on following the ritual forms (and he could hear his father in memory, telling him that the forms were there for a reason, that they gave substance and shape and meaning to life; his father had believed the lies, had put his faith in Valen. It was an awful secret Lennier carried).

(Delenn said she served the voice, not the vessel. Lennier wished he had her faith).

"Neroon was to be Warleader after me. He died to make amends for my mistake, died following the calling of his heart," and Shakiri's voice was heavy with sorrow, but it suddenly sounded strong, sure. "Neroon showed all of us a path to healing. I choose to follow it, to study the ways of our _kaf'min'drala_."

"_Durah Valen'min, ier'ma,_" Clarenn said; _be welcome in Valen's house, child_, and her face lit with a smile. Even at this distance, Lennier could see that Mayan's face (Mayan stood at Clarenn's side yet) was wet with tears, though she cried silently.

Mayan had killed two men, had broken Delenn's heart; Shakiri had ignited the war that almost destroyed their world. By tomorrow, word of what had transpired in this courtyard in the weak light of dawn would have spread across all of Minbar, and all would know that Shakiri, coward and destroyer of worlds had gone down into the heart of the rock with _Shaal_ Mayan and they had emerged healed, emerged with their souls whole, and Shakiri had pledged his life to the service of Valen.

In the years to come, they would speak of the miracles that had transpired in these few weeks. Delenn's survival. Neroon's sacrifice. Shakiri's conversion. (They would call Shakiri a healer, would speak of his desire for reconciliation between the Warrior caste and Religious caste, for joining of the _kaf'min'drala_ after so many years). Soon enough, they would forget what Shakiri had done.

(They would call it faith, forgiveness, and they would quote the words of Valen. Lennier knew the truth. It was a lie, a forgetting. He would remember for all of them).

The priests and priestesses began to chant, softly at first, then gaining strength; the notes and the words swelled through the crowd, ritual words of healing; welcoming Mayan, Shakiri back into the sunlight, back into life. (They had gone down into the womb of the world and been reborn).

Tonight at sunset, Shakiri would speak his first oaths to Valen.

The priests chanted with their eyes closed, faces tipped up to the early-morning sun, and their expressions were suffused with joy. Unable to watch any longer (unable to bear this lie, this forgetting), Lennier turned and walked quietly from the courtyard.

He had been supposed to stay until the end, to embrace Mayan, to give her words of welcome from Delenn.

When Delenn asked, Lennier would tell her he had been overcome by emotion, that he could not bear to stay. (It was not a lie).

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_Epilogue: Looking Into the Heart of Light_

Years ago, Mayan had written of this great ship, had written of _En'Fili_ , which roamed among the stars, carrying the Nine robed in grey, eternally bound to their world and yet apart from it. She had called this place graceful, grace-filled, a ship of burdens. She never thought to set foot here, to tread where Dukhat's feet had walked (Dukhat's feet and also Delenn's, and Delenn had been so young when she had been called to serve). It was (strange as it seemed after all those years of dreaming, of holding this place in reverence, of using grave words and grand in its naming) no different than any other ship.

Her people had spent too long glorifying the extraordinary, too long looking for greatness (calling it wisdom, or rightness), too long looking away, outside; too little time grounded in the small beauties of home. (It was the little things that brought healing). When she found her words again (she would someday find her words again), Mayan would write of the small things.

Sun-warmed herbs in the garden. The soft reassurance of candlelight. (An old man's hand, reaching out in the darkness.)

For now, she waited. The chamber the young woman in grey robes (lighter grey than the robes of the Council; the girl was merely an acolyte, as Delenn had once been, and Mayan had bid Delenn a tearful goodbye in the garden of the temple on the day Delenn had gone up to _En'fili_; it had been midsummer, and the tiny silver flowers had been blooming) showed her to was simple, unadorned. A bench of light wood, carved of a single piece and all smooth curves, a little table with a pitcher of water and two cups, a rug of rich undyed cloth on the floor. It was restful, rather than stark.

The message had come from Delenn two days after Mayan and Shakiri came up out of the heart of the stone, two days after they emerged from _Cha'dum drala'id_ into the sunlight, changed. _Will you come and hear my words, my _id'sal'ier_, my dearest one, so that in days to come, you can sing words of truth?_

Mayan had stood for a moment, looking at Delenn's messenger (and how young so many of the _Anla'shok_ seemed to be!), dreading a return of the dark, seething hatred that had coiled for so long in her center, but all she had felt was sadness, and she remembered Shakiri's words: "This was never what Delenn wanted. Never what she intended. Had it not been for my actions, _my_ choice, we might have gone on in peace after the Shadow War."

Delenn, when she broke the council, had done what she thought was necessary to save their people, necessary to win the Shadow War, to beat back a thousand years of darkness. Mayan, when she killed Shaka and Vashaer (they had names, and she had killed them, but she had had no choice; she remembered now the fear she had felt when they pushed her against the wall, tore open her robe) had acted to save her own life. Necessity was sometimes a cruel mistress. A sad old man had taught her that.

"Tell her I will come," Mayan had said to the ranger, and her voice was gentle. Now she was here, in this little room on the _En'fili_.

Mayan expected the acolyte to return to guide Mayan to Delenn's chambers, but when she looked up at the soft sound of the opening door, she startled. This was no acolyte, but Delenn herself, robed in blue, moving slowly, tentatively, a hand braced against the wall for support (and Mayan was sure that Delenn should not yet have left her bed but Delenn had always had little enough concern for the frailties of the flesh). Delenn looked thin, almost translucent, but in her eyes what Mayan saw was a woman stripped down to the truest essence of herself (in her eyes Mayan saw wisdom and immense strength).

Mayan rose, ready to bow her head before Delenn and beg forgiveness (forgiveness for refusing to come on the night before Delenn offered herself as a sacrifice to save their world, forgiveness for Mayan's hatred, forgiveness for Mayan's horrible words), but Delenn shook her head, a faint smile touching her lips. "Before you do that, _sal'ier_, know there is nothing to forgive," and Delenn's voice was rich and warm despite her weakness. (Delenn had always known her too well).

"I refused to come to you when you needed me most," Mayan whispered.

"You have come to me now," Delenn corrected. "And you will bear witness to the remaking of our world." She bowed her head, reached out a hand and rested it on Mayan's heart in the ritual gesture of welcome.

Swallowing back tears, Mayan echoed the gesture. "Delenn," she whispered. "_Id'sali'er_." (That she had learned forgiveness from Shakiri still seemed unutterably strange, but Mayan felt a moment of blazing joy as the words fell from her lips).

"Always," Delenn agreed, and then, shedding formality like she might shed a piece of outworn clothing, Delenn embraced her oldest friend.

Later that day, Mayan would stand in the shadows and watch as Delenn called the new Nine, as Delenn remade what she had unmade. She would watch as Delenn called two priests and two warriors to serve, would watch as she called five of the Worker caste to fill the remaining circles of light.

The workers, Delenn would explain, built ships for fighting and temples for praying, and for too long they had been caught in the middle. It was time for the priests and the warriors to learn to serve the people, she said, to learn to serve those who built.

(It had been Shakiri's idea, Delenn would tell Mayan later. He would make a wonderful priest).

In a year's time, Mayan would sing of the quiet wisdom of old men, and of steadying hands in the darkness.


End file.
